


Court of the Forsaken

by LaEmperatrizMariana



Series: The Tale of the Stone Idol [2]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2019-07-24 09:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16172519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaEmperatrizMariana/pseuds/LaEmperatrizMariana
Summary: Trouble is brewing on Luna-1. The Brainmasters and Emirate Xaaron teach Pharma how to be a vampire slayer because it's always been his divine destiny, yet evil unseen forces have relentlessly tried to stop this from occurring. These enemies, of course, have not given up just yet! Meanwhile, the chief justice suffers in silence, wondering how much more problems he can handle. His political enemies are slowly gaining the upper hand, and now vampires have awakened on the dark side of the moon. He can do nothing but helplessly observe his world collapse all around him.





	1. The Wayward Son

**Author's Note:**

> I just want to write a story about a heroic, vampire-slayer Pharma. Really, that's basically it. And to see how the trine would get along in this AU, since all of them are legitimately good and also like Pharma, even though he's a massive awkward weirdo. Obviously, if you're reading this story, you just want to read a totally random adventure and care little for "canon compliance".
> 
> This story takes place immediately after the events of "[The Beautiful Liberation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11402775/chapters/25540170)". I apologize if that makes this more difficult to follow if you weren't interested in that other story. :/

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mysterious prisoner arrives on Luna-1.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was beta-read by [KinkStone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KinkStone/profile).
> 
> (Also, I couldn't wait for Halloween. So I rather post this chapter today since it is Pharma's day in Lost Light Fest 2018.)

    Lockdown and his crew warped back to Luna-1, with the missing people and a mysterious prisoner. Steve, Lockdown’s second-in-command, attempted to interview the missing people but they had no recollection of what had occurred. Their last memories were from 15 solar cycles ago, around the time they had gone missing. They appeared as if they were comatose. However, the ones who had found them claimed that these mechs were deceased during that time. They said the mysterious prisoner, who had willingly turned himself in and was currently detained in a stasis pod, was the one who resurrected them. As part of his duties as an Tyrest Accord Enforcer, albeit an "unofficial" one, Lockdown had to gather all the proper information from the ship the missing people were found on – The Lost Light. But the only one he had found information on was on the mysterious prisoner, a medi-jet by the name of Pharma from the Meandering Heights, Great River, Stanix. Pharma had previously been stationed in Messantine, a desolate snowy planet where the DJD stationed. Still, this didn't explain these supposed resurrections. However, Lockdown knew this case was far beyond his control and tried not to think of it.

* * *

    Turning to Steve, his triple-changer second-in-command, Lockdown said, “I can’t help but feel that I deserve getting involved with this mess. I’m not gonna lie, I left Luna-1 because those zombies – er, terrorcons creeped me out.”

    “Me too!” said Steve. “You’re not alone. That’s why we didn’t hesitate to retreat and grabbed some lukewarm coffee that’s been sitting out for hours instead.”

    “Still, after assessing these ‘missing people’ who are like a dozen, they seem…normal,” said Lockdown. “The scans detected no abnormalities. This case is strange, not creepy but chilling nonetheless.”

    The pilot, Lugnut, spoke on the intercom, “The space bridge has appeared. We’ll be in Luna-1 shortly.” The ship went through the space bridge and arrived in the hangar at Luna-1. The legislators were there awaiting the missing people and escorted them to a safe location, while they tried to get in contact with their families. Lockdown’s phone began to ring, it was from one of his deputies, Hardshell.

    “Boss…the prisoner…he’s dead,” said Hardshell.

    “What?!” asked Lockdown, as he hurried back inside his ship. He went to the stasis pod and saw that Pharma had become so desaturated that he was now a deathly gray.

    Hardshell leaned over and whispered, “Can we still harvest him for parts?”

    “No,” said Lockdown, “I told the chief justice about him. Besides, once they’re gray like this the parts are useless. If you tried to transplant them, you’d get gangrene. Get the stretcher. I’ll wheel him to the medibay and you disinfect this stasis pod.” Lockdown reached at a nearby table and handed a pair of gloves to Hardshell. After putting on his own pair, Lockdown placed Pharma on the stretcher that Hardshell had brought. But something was strange, the prisoner was still warm, as if he lived, yet the scans insisted that he was dead.

    Before he started scrubbing, Hardshell handed Lockdown a large tarp and they threw it over the prisoner. Unfortunately, Pharma’s feet were so big that the tarp didn’t cover them. Taking a chance, Lockdown threw away his gloves and donned new ones. Then, he pulled out his teleporter and used it to teleport Pharma and himself to the medibay. Although Lockdown had calculated the exact location, he miscalculated the draft the teleporting did and the tarp he had placed on Pharma slid off of him. To make matters worse, the missing people were also right there in that exact same spot.

    Fortunately, for Lockdown, Pharma was no longer gray and had returned to his normal red, white, and blue color-scheme. Pharma sat up and had a stupid confused look on his face. Angry, Lockdown grabbed him by the throat and said, “Sit your aft back down, you b*llshit chameleon!”

    The missing people gasped at Lockdown’s cruel treatment of an innocent jet. At this point, Lockdown was so mad that he didn’t even care. Although Pharma brandished the symbol of the Guiding Hand god, Adaptus, as his badge, Lockdown could tell Pharma was another annoying Autobot. And of course, Lockdown had no respect for such mechs.

    Just then, the chief justice entered the medibay. He was a tall green angelic jet, whose helm resembled a large golden crown, His face was a warm coppery color and his eyes were golden like honey. He was accompanied by a priest named Laster, who reached his waist. Laster was a blue-eyed black masked mech with yellow arms and wore a necklace with a white crystal on it. The white crystal immediately began to glow brightly like a flash bomb. The chief justice used his cape to shield his eyes from the light, as Laster tried to grab it. Once Laster had it secured, he approached the missing mechs with the chief justice, who went to observe and help.

    The chief justice also saw Lockdown roughly handling Pharma. He tapped Laster’s shoulder, “Shouldn’t you assess that suspect instead? The one who mass resurrected everyone.”

    As Laster approached the prisoner, the crystal began to glow so brightly that Laster could see the bones in his hands, as his metallic flesh was illuminated by the light as if it were alabaster. Lockdown’s eyes widened when he saw the crystal glow. He let go of Pharma as Laster approached him.

    The chief justice then turned his attention to the missing people. Seeing that they were appalled by Lockdown’s actions, the chief justice tried to divert attention away from him and said to them, “I have been informed that your families have been located. Now it’s just a matter of getting in touch with them.”

    One of the mechs raised his hand and the chief justice pointed at him, giving him permission to speak. The mech asked, “That fast? It’s been like…” The mech held out his hands and tried to count his fingers. He messed up and tried again. Satisfied with his calculations he said, “…Almost 5 hours. Amazing.”

    The chief justice smiled, even though it had been only 3 hours that had passed. He checked his phone and had received a notification that they had gotten in contact with one of the missing people’s surviving relatives. He checked the photo and the name, before saying, “Which one of you is Nova Storm?”

    “Here I am!” said a purple and yellow jet femme, who had matched the photo.

    The chief justice handed her the phone and guided her to a nearby room so she could speak with her relative in private.

    Another missing mech approached the chief justice and asked him, “What’s the deal with that radioactive crystal? That guy must be so hardcore for still holding onto it.”

    “It’s a very rare milky white energon crystal sometimes referred to as ‘holy energon’,” said the chief justice. “Just like dark energon is believed to be the blood of Unicron, holy energon is believed to be the blood of Primus. It glows brightly in the presence of more holy energon but its light doesn’t burn.”

    Meanwhile, Pharma was confused and concerned over the bright glow of the crystal – surely it was burning Laster’s hand. (Like the others, Pharma had no idea its light was only harmful to the profane.) Laster moved his glowing hand closer to Pharma which caused Pharma’s chassis to open and reveal his spark chamber. However, the circuitry around the spark chamber had a similar circular pattern to Adaptus’ symbol. Still looking at Pharma’s spark-chamber, Laster said coldly, “Lockdown, please call over the chief justice.”

    Lockdown approached the chief justice and said to him, “Laster wants to speak with you.”

    The chief justice replied, “Alright. Thank you and you’re dismissed to resume your duties. We’ll take it from here.” He turned to the missing people and said, "I'll be right back."

    As soon as the chief justice was within hearing distance, Laster said, “This mech is the reincarnation of Adaptus. He has tapped into his divine energy and used it to mass resurrect these missing people. There is no need to investigate his actions, we know what he did.”

    “What?” asked Pharma, who had no idea what had occurred because he was unconscious when it happened.

    Upon hearing his answer, both Laster and the chief justice glared at him. Pharma regretted opening his mouth and knew he was going to be in for an unwelcoming stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I admit that most of these missing people were random background filler bots, and I didn't even have names planned for them. But it's not that bad because this means I can use more uncommon TFs to fill these roles, like [Nova Storm](https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Nova_Storm_\(Cyberverse\)) who is a recurring character in Cyberverse and though [her name existed for a long time](https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Nova_Storm_\(G1\)), it wasn't used until recently.


	2. Dangerous Philosophy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pharma and Laster walk down a disorienting hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was beta-read by: [Tentaculiferous](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Tentaculiferous/profile) and [KinkStone](http://archiveofourown.org/users/KinkStone/profile).
> 
> This chapter also contains some of my headcanons regarding Cybertronian religion. I apologize for the awful backstory about Pharma. :c

    Pharma was filled with immense shame for having made a bad first impression in front of two very important mechs. Sensing his distress, the chief justice began to coo at Pharma. Pharma froze, surprised at even hearing the sound which brought forth emotions he never felt before. Overwhelmed, Pharma began to cry.

    Feeling awful for what he had done, the chief justice handed Laster his staff and tried to comfort Pharma with a hug. “No…I didn’t mean to make you cry. I’m so sorry for hurting you…”

    Taking a deep breath, Pharma said to the chief justice, “This is the first time anyone has ever cooed to me…not even my own dam…”

    (Parental jets coo at their sparklings to calm them down and comfort them. The sound brings almost immediate relief to a sparkling because it triggers the intrinsic trust a sparkling should have with their parent. This feeling doesn’t diminish with age. Obviously, only jets who have raised sparklings can make this sound because it’s a locked ability.)

    Horrified, the chief justice continued to coo and cradle Pharma in his arms, like a sparkling. Pharma noticed his reflection on the chief justice’s staff. Despite his complete reformatting, Pharma still had his very youthful reflection; he literally looked like a sparkling. That’s what he saw being cradled and comforted by the chief justice. The reflection horrified him. He assumed the reformatting would've healed him and finally give him a normal reflection. But it appeared that healing only works on the living and Pharma had indeed died a long time ago. For a moment, he wondered if the reformatting had turned him back to a sparkling. He felt the chief justice was treating him like one. (To be fair, larger mechs like the chief justice sometimes babied the smaller ones since they're "child-sized" by comparison.) Still, this reminded him of one of the first interactions he ever had with his mentor, Ratchet.

    Pharma had trouble adjusting to his move from Stanix to the distant med school. Jets are social creatures and he was more alone than ever. He had come to Ratchet’s office to discuss the results of a quiz. (Although he passed the quiz with a 7, he still needed to speak with his instructor over the results.) During this conversation, he was suddenly so overwhelmed by his emotions that he couldn’t stop sobbing. Ratchet, of course comforted him, something Pharma wasn’t used to. Prior to this, Pharma was used to others scolding him and mocking him for having any sort of emotional "outburst." Perhaps that was why he became attached to Ratchet, the comforting affection he received from him felt so refreshing and that made Pharma want more.

    Pharma was almost beginning to feel the same way about the chief justice. This embarrassed him because he didn’t even know the chief justice's name, only that he had clearly had his own offspring. Pharma was also conflicted because it felt like he was rejecting Ratchet and all he had done for him, in exchange for a majestic, yet mysterious jet. Fortunately, the confusion lessened his distress enough that the chief justice let him go. He spoke to Laster, before going back to meet with the missing people and getting his phone back from the femme he lent it to. 

    Laster, who had already put away his crystal deep in his subspace said, “Relax…You’re not in trouble. I tend to forget that a lot of divine reincarnations aren’t typically from overly religious backgrounds.” 

    “My whole family is atheist…,” replied Pharma, “I think. They never seemed to believe in any sort of divine higher power. But they were very superstitious and only cared about money. But we were all poor.”

    Laster raised an eyebrow.

    “Yeah, like religion was mostly non-existent growing up,” said Pharma. “I even thought my mentor was one of those silver-faced atheists that belittles religion any chance he gets, but then I found out that he just thinks Neo-Primalism is full of scrap. He can't stand it and roasts it every time.”

    “About that,” said Laster, “I’m sure now that you’ve channeled Adaptus, you have a better insight to your faith. What is your stance on Neo-Primalism? I’m curious.”

    “I used to think it was the same as the regular Primalism, but simplified?” replied Pharma. “But now, I agree with my mentor that it _is_ full of scrap. For starters, why would _anyone_ omit books from the Covenant of Primus? That’s stupid.”

    “It’s because Liege Maximo, Megatronus, and Mortilus, are considered traitors to the pantheon,” replied Laster. “To be honest, me and my friends were from a Neo-Primalist sect but these apocryphal texts became fascinating to us. Can’t speak for the others, but as a theoretician, I yearn for forbidden knowledge. We’ve also took a pilgrimage a while back and that pretty much confirmed that 'regular' Primalism is valid.”

    Pharma nodded, he still didn’t understand the Cybertronian religion. (Mostly because there's so much overlap between the multiple sects and people are sometimes active under multiple sects. Some of these sects are devoted to a particular god from the Guiding Hand. Others are devoted to one of the original Thirteen Primes. Some of them worship every single member of the pantheon, while others reject the "traitors". All of them do worship Primus and reject Unicron.)

    “Still, your arrival is an omen of good fortune,” said Laster. “Come, I must take you to my friends, who are fellow priests. They’re excited to meet you.”

    Feeling like he didn't have much of a choice, Pharma followed Laster to the chapel. Looking at the repetitive golden hexagonal walls of the compound's hallways, Pharma asked, “How do you not get lost in here? I feel like we’ve been walking around in circles.”

    Chuckling, Laster pulled out a small device from his wrist that had a map on it. They were going in the right direction and had not been walking around in circles. “The chief justice designed these for ‘trusted guests’. As for the interior design, blame insecticons. They always have to turn everything into a labyrinth to ‘protect the queen’ and to trap enemies.”

    They continued to walk for a bit when Pharma asked, “Are you from the Circle of Light?”

    Surprised by the question, Laster replied, “Yes. How did you know?”

    “My mentor has this adopted son named ‘Drift’ and you two look very similar,” said Pharma. “I’ve been told that your sect is one of the ones who practices body modification. There is an emphasis on looking like ‘elegant warriors’.”

    Laster burst out laughing. “I remember Drift, he was a troublesome one. He annoyed our Supereme Commander, Dai Atlas. But I can’t blame Drift, the poor kid was going through a very rough time – severe spiritual distress caused by a lifetime of crime and godlessness.”

    “Well, that’s how Decepticons are,” replied Pharma. “They’re always looking to start trouble.”

    “No, you misunderstand,” said Laster, whose expression suddenly became quite serious. “Drift was ‘troublesome’ because he’s so proactive. In our sect, we follow a strict warrior code and this code has been subject to debate for many years. Dai Atlas wanted us to train and become skilled, but not to fight for what we believe in. Our friend and leader, Star Saber, wants us to fight because training without a cause is in vain. Drift seemed to agree with Star Saber and the rest of us, except he doesn’t want to bring death to unbelievers. Coward. But then, he defected from his ‘faction’, so there was already some cowardice inside of him.”

    Pharma tried to remain calm. He was scared of what Laster would say about him, for running away from his problems since it was clear that Laster only respected those who stayed and fought until the end. But at the same time, Laster was far away from Theophany. So to Pharma, Laster either “ran away” or was excommunicated – both of which would quickly sour the conversation if brought up.

    Wanting to lighten the mood and not derail the subject too much, Pharma said, “Drift has two sparklings. They’re twins and I think they’re like 5 or 6 solar cycles old. Their names are Jetstorm and Sliptream, and I was told they were named after two people who had a significant positive impact in Drift’s life.”

    “That’s…that’s so sweet,” said Laster. “As you know, names are very important to us. They define who we are and who we can become. My parents named me ‘Laster’ because they sensed tenacity within me. Wait, what’s your name? I don’t think they even told me.”

    “Pharma,” replied Pharma.

    “What a specific name, perfect for a healer,” said Laster, who only then noticed the medical cross-hair emblems on both of his wings. Playing it cool, Laster added, “It’s good to see you studied medicine. Your family must’ve sensed you would become a great doctor.”

    Pharma smiled, but then he remembered hearing anecdotes about his carrier trying to drink various potions to induce a miscarriage, yet Pharma still survived. He was obviously named after the mix of concoctions that had failed to get rid of him. Naturally, this was one reason he studied medicine, to change the meaning of his name and identity.

    When they entered the chapel, Laster introduced him to the other priests; a blue and red, blue-visored scientist named Braver, a red silver-faced barbarian/cleric named Blacker, a tall black and white shuttle named Galaxy Shuttle, and finally a tall stately convoy-looking jet named Star Saber.

    Star Saber spoke abruptly, “Where are your hands?”

    Laster’s eyes widened because he didn’t even notice that either.

    “A Unicron cultist cut them off and for some reason they didn’t reattach when I got reformatted,” replied Pharma. “They must’ve landed somewhere far away from the rest of my body.”

    Suddenly, Laster’s phone began to ring. It was from the chief justice. Laster put it on speakerphone.

    “Laster, where are you?” asked the chief justice.

    “I’m at the chapel,” replied Laster.

    “Is the Reincarnation of Adaptus with you?” asked the chief justice.

    “Yes Sir,” said Laster.

    “Good, please tell him to come over, I have a present for him,” said the chief justice, who activated a ground bridge that opened up in the chapel.

    Laster and the other priests encouraged Pharma to walk through the ground bridge. Excited, but nervous about this ‘gift’ Pharma walked through the ground bridge and into an engineering workshop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how to make it more painfully obvious, but as said in the previous story "[The Beautiful Liberation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11402775/chapters/27127017)" Pharma was the one who accidentally reanimated the corpses in the necropolis. Even in another older story, "[Marked for Death](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6014533)" it states that these reanimated corpses only attack the necromancer's enemies. So for these undead to attack Pharma's village says a lot about his relationship with them. That they made him feel so unwanted and therefore, unsafe. And this attack didn't help things get any better, but at least no one knows _he_ was the culprit…though he does feel remorse for the disappearance of another sparkling during this attack. The kid probably didn’t like him, but he wasn’t a threat.
> 
> The sad truth is that these traumas just exaggerated his attachment that he feels for Ratchet.


	3. Farmarella!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are finally looking up for Pharma as he receives a thoughtful present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Not beta-read.**
> 
>  
> 
> The title is supposed to be “Pharma” + “Cinderella”, even though it looks like I spelled his name in Spanish (Farma) and possibly mixed it with “Mozzarella” instead of “Parmesan” ~~Pharmesan~~. 
> 
> Oh well, the title is going to make sense as you read this chapter, I promise.

    The chief justice was at the engineering workshop, accompanied by his long-time friend and former Autobot High Council Chairman, Emirate Xaaron. Xaaron was small golden tankformer whose helm had a silvery crown. He barely reached the chief justice's thigh. Xaaron was curious about the gift, which the chief justice had hidden under a towel. Annoyed, the chief justice said, “Stop being so nosy.”

    “Tyrest, I just want to know what kind of gift you’re planning to give the Reincarnation of Adaptus,” said Xaaron as he tried to lift the towel, but the chief justice quickly put his hand over Xaaron’s. Although Tyrest applied gentle pressure on Xaaron’s hand, it was enough for Xaaron to be able to feel what was beneath the towel. And Xaaron felt something – bony.

    “Well, I want to know what exactly you told those missing people to have the majority of these neutral becoming so interested in joining the Autobot faction,” replied Tyrest.

    “There’s nothing I needed to say,” said Xaaron, “they made the right choice for themselves.”

    Tyrest narrowed his eyes. The truth was that Xaaron was right. He didn’t need to say anything. The missing people just saw Lockdown, a Decepticon, rough-handle the mech credited for giving them a second-chance at life and they found it offensive. Most neutrals, of course, liked to be with the “right side” and in this case it was the Autobots. Especially, since it was Emirate Xaaron and his mentee, the famous detective Nightbeat, who were so quick and diligent to search for their families.

    Unsatisfied with the truth, Tyrest withdrew his hand and looked through the ground bridge when he heard Pharma approach. Upon seeing Pharma, Xaaron gasped and asked, “Pharma?”

    “You know this mech?” asked the chief justice.

    “Of course,” replied Xaaron. “He is Ratchet’s, the Autobots’ CMO, most gifted student. I’ve heard much about him, including the claim of the 0% morality rate during his experimental surgeries.”

    Overhearing Xaaron, Pharma smiled. Despite regularly boasting about that accomplishment, Pharma was ashamed of it because he occasionally used necromancy to keep the mortality rate at 0%. The guilt of “cheating” was starting to get to him, because Emirate Xaaron wasn’t a mech who complemented anyone easily, and Pharma felt unworthy of the praise.

    Meanwhile, Tyrest looked through the Autopedia with his phone, to see who Ratchet was. He was indeed familiar. Tyrest remembered disliking Ratchet’s pessimistic attitude but he seemed like a good, hardworking and compassionate person. After quickly putting away his phone, Tyrest said, “I can’t wait to show you the present!”

    Pharma hurried to the table, wondering if the gift was worth the hype.

    Smiling, Tyrest lifted the towel to reveal a pair of dismembered, blank forearms with their hands attached. Xaaron gasped, shocked at the sight of such a morbid gift. But it was then, that he noticed that Pharma’s hands had been cleanly cut off.

    Pharma’s eyes widened and he looked at Tyrest, mumbling, “Thank you…”

    “You’re welcome,” replied Tyrest. “These aren’t just any type of hands. They’re experimental upgrades, confiscated from Tyrest Accord violators. I always feel bad about destroying upgrades like this. High-quality blank parts for transplants are often difficult to come by. I usually reserve these upgrades for injured enforcers and deputies, because I can trust that they would never use them to harm innocents. But you, you’re the Reincarnation of Adaptus, and you have saved countless lives as a doctor… for you, these hands are fully deserved.”

    “So…what do they do?” asked Xaaron.

    Tyrest reached over, grabbing the right hand and squeezing its wrist, making it extend its claws. From the claws, several lasers. After retracting the hand’s claws, Tyrest said, “Infiltrate."

    “Does this mean they can turn into anything?” asked Pharma excitedly.

    “No,” replied Tyrest. “That’s…that’s physically impossible. They can just hack into practically anything and grant you temporary invisibility.”

    Disappointed, Pharma asked, “Um…I don’t want to sound picky, much less ungrateful, but can I make a request?”

    “Go ahead,” replied Tyrest.

    “Can you engrave a transmutation circle into the right hand’s palm?” asked Pharma. “My old hand had that engraving to facilitate my alchemy. When I did it on myself, it hurt so much. Engraving the blank before the transplant won't cause me pain.”

    Pharma projected the transmutation circle he wanted onto the table. Tyrest hurried and found an engraving pen in a drawer. Pharma projected the circle again, as Tyrest engraved it perfectly onto the hand. As soon as he finished, Pharma said, “Can you also make it to where the right hand also turns into a chainsaw? Please…”

    “You told me you only had a request,” replied Tyrest as he applied a soothing, antibiotic balm on the freshly engraved hand. 

    “This is a bonus one,” replied Pharma as he immediately regretted the words that came out of his mouth. He was also starting to feel immense guilt for lying to Tyrest. Pharma never had a transmutation circle engraved into his hand. He was too scared to do it himself because it would hurt, but he always wanted one.

    Tyrest chuckled, amused by Pharma’s wit.

    “I thought surgeons used circular saws,” replied Xaaron as he observed Tyrest bandaging the hand.

    “A chainsaw feels more natural,” said Pharma. He had no idea why he wanted one so badly but then he realized; that in a different timeline, the chainsaw was his weapon of choice. However, he wasn’t a talented surgeon, but a maniacal murderer. Still, Pharma had to figure out a way to consolidate and balance both timelines to become truly holistic.

    Tyrest ordered Xaaron to fetch him a chainsaw he had in the nearby utility closet, and worked to incorporate it into the right forearm. Xaaron assisted Tyrest by shining a light from his phone.

    Pharma was bothered by the fact that neither Tyrest nor Xaaron were using face-masks during the procedure. But then, they weren't proper medics. (Pharma also trusted that both had washed their hands because they were the hygienic types.) When Tyrest was finished, he called Pharma over and Xaaron helped Pharma to a nearby stool. It was then that Tyrest realized that he needed anesthetic.

    “Xaaron, please call the clinic and ask them for trampolizers,” said Tyrest.

    Xaaron blinked, momentarily caught off-guard by the mispronunciation. He called the clinic and requested the tranquilizers, only for the operator to "correct" him and call them "trampolizers" instead.

    Within moments, a legislator holding a surgery kit, two syringes, and a vial of local anesthetic, walked through the ground-bridge. Tyrest remained calm as soon as he saw the surgery kit. He had forgotten all about it and felt so ashamed for embarrassing himself in front of Pharma, one of Cybertron's best surgeons. However, Pharma was so used to having to resort to crude unhygienic methods at Delphi (a defunct Autobot hospital) that he didn't even notice that Tyrest had done anything wrong. Xaaron got the disinfectant wipes and started wiping Pharma's forearms as Tyrest calculated the dosage of the anesthetic. Pharma was surprised that Tyrest asked him to double-check on the dosage, his own teammates back at Delphi never did that. When Pharma confirmed it was correct, Tyrest prepared the second syringe, lightly recapped it, and put it aside. Meanwhile, Pharma couldn't help but feel unsettled by the legislator who was staring at him, with his red eyes wide open. 

    To play it safe, Tyrest decided to install the left arm. As he reached over to grab the left arm, he stopped. Without turning around, he asked the legislator, "Do you need something?"

    The legislator shook his head and activated the ground-bridge to return to the clinic. Tyrest frowned, he didn't mean to ask the legislator to leave and had assumed he was curious about the surgey since it wasn't being performed in the clinic. Tyrest grabbed the arm as Pharma donned his face-mask. It was then that Tyrest remembered that he needed to put one on too. Fortunately, Xaaron had gotten the face-mask from the kit, raised his stool and helped Tyrest put it on. (Even though it was an awkward fit because his chin got in the way.) After injecting the local anesthetic and waiting for it to take effect, Tyrest began to work as Pharma observed.

    Curious, Xaaron asked, “How is the chief justice doing? In terms of technique?”

    Surprised by the question, Pharma replied, “He’s doing great! The two doctors I had to work with at my old place weren’t even as close to competent as the chief justice. But then, Delphi was the worst hospital and they had dumped us there, in those remote outskirts.”

    The complement was enough to relax the chief justice, who worked quickly to install the arm. When he was finished, he began to work on the other one. Unfortunately, he was so excited to finish the job that he injected Pharma’s right arm with sedative, when Pharma had yet not finished metabolizing the previous dose. Because Pharma was quietly observing, neither Tyrest nor Xaaron noticed that Pharma was high out of his mind.

    Pharma yawned and asked Tyrest, “Are you my fairy godmother?”

    It was then that Tyrest realized his grave mistake, that he had overdosed his patient. Calmly, he replied, “What do you think…?”

    “That you are,” replied Pharma. “I mean, how come you’re so madly talented? That’s gotta be magic; there’s no other explanation. You’re also being unnaturally nice to me with your…helping. Everyone else hates my guts and wants me gone.”

    Concerned, Tyrest replied, “It’s common courtesy. You must be polite to others, unless they are heartless criminals who want to shed the blood of the innocent.”

    Pharma giggled. “There’s nothing ‘common’ about your courtesy. That’s good because it makes it rare and rare things are always more valuable, so they’re worth treasuring.” Pharma yawned again, only to change color and turn into a denim blue. His demeanor was different and he appeared to be full conscious.

    “Forgive my sudden interruption, but I had to take control from my reincarnation,” replied Pharma. “He was about to say some deeply personal things that he would regret talking about them so soon.”

    Tyrest froze, his hands had gone numb as soon as Pharma had channeled Adaptus. Without a second thought, Xaaron tried to finish the surgery as Adaptus observed. Fortunately, Tyrest was almost done and he only needed to solder the plating shut.

    Unlike Tyrest, Xaaron wasn’t scared or intimidated by Adaptus. In fact, he was calm and more cheerful. When he finished, Adaptus inspected the arms and said nothing, though he did smile at both Tyrest and Xaaron. He then began to reformat his body, to quicken the installation process. As soon as he was done, Adaptus changed back to the regular Pharma colors.

    Pharma shook his head and looked at his arms. The blank hands now matched his plating. “Thanks.”

    He noticed that Tyrest was still frozen and was confused. Clearing his throat, Pharma began to chirp like a young sparkling, which seemed to snap Tyrest out of his trance-like state.

    Taking off his mask, Tyrest hurried to assess Pharma. Meanwhile, Xaaron’s phone received a text message and he went to check it. It was from his mentee, Nightbeat. Xaaron’s eyes widened and he hurried out of the engineering workshop.

    Tyrest shook his head. “Typical. He leaves right before clean up.”

    “I’ll help you,” said Pharma.

    “No, you need to rest your hands,” said Tyrest as he disposed of the syringes in the sharps container and examined the remnants of Pharma’s old arms. “Do you still want these?”

    “No,” replied Pharma.

    “Alright,” said Tyrest as he put them in a bio-hazard bag. “First I need to stop by the clinic and then…well, we’ll figure it out from there, sound good?”

    “Yes Sir,” replied Pharma.

    Tyrest grabbed his staff and activated the ground-bridge. He told Pharma to walk ahead as he turned around and made sure everything was back to how it was before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that tranquilizers (or "trampolizers" because the word sounds similar to "trampoline'") and anesthetics are not the same thing. Tranquilizers are sedatives used to calm someone down, and anesthetics are stronger for surgery. But Tyrest and almost everyone else on Luna-1, aren't experts in pharmacology. So to them, it's all the same thing.
> 
> On a side note. When I was going to lectures, I became annoyed with the use of the word "holistic". So the reason it's in here is out of spite.


	4. Cena Auream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A somewhat casual dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was beta-read by: [Tentaculiferous](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Tentaculiferous/profile).
> 
> It also references things from a filler story that's still in my Google Drive docs because I haven't thought up a title for it. Still, I know y'all are reading this for Pharma and he's not in that other filler story. But, if I ever think of a title and post it after I finish, I'll link to it and update this author's note. 
> 
> I've had to take a brief pause in my work. Mostly because of Tumblr's ToS change and me wanting to preserve my TF side-blog that had sticky/PnP stuff in it. So all those posts need to go. X_x

    Xaaron had not gotten far when he saw Nightbeat standing around the corner, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. It took Xaaron a moment to notice that his mentee was no longer bright blue and neon yellow, but was gold-plated instead. Looking up, Xaaron asked, “You found something?”

    “Yes,” replied Nightbeat, as he searched through his subspace, “my personalized graduation pen. I must’ve dropped it when I was exploring that hidden golden lagoon and tripped on a rock. Then, the pen rolled to the bottom of the lagoon. It’s difficult to see when I dived in, but I managed to find it, along with these.”

    Nightbeat pulled out a golden hide purse, filled with several antique coins. 

    Xaaron inspected the hide purse and said, “It’s quite primitive in construction.”

    “Exactly,” said Nightbeat, who opened the purse and showed Xaaron one of the coins. “These coins are primitive too. They’re stamped instead of molded but look at the symbol.” The antique coins had Adaptus’ symbol on them. “You know what this means? There is a chance that Adaptica might’ve been real after all. The legislators might know something about it. But I can’t understand their heavy accent. They sure seemed excited about the Reincarnation of Adaptus being here on Luna-1.”

    “Tyrest isn’t going to like this,” replied Xaaron.

    “Why not?” asked Nightbeat.

    “He doesn’t get along with the High Priest of Kalis,” said Xaaron. “Technically, he’s the Sea of Rust’s Archbishop and he worships Adaptus instead of Solomus, for some reason. Tyrest told me the High Priest is upset with him for naming the Autobot and Decepticon city-states respectively – Kalis and Tyrest. The High Priest wanted them to be called East Adaptica and West Adaptica, but Tyrest told him that only three people worshiped Adaptus in the entire Sea of Rust, therefore it was an absurd suggestion.”

    “Whoa…” replied Nightbeat. “I don’t know this High Priest but that was harsh.”

    “I met the mech,” said Xaaron, “and he’s overbearing. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t worship Solomus. The Solomus sect tends to be very humble, but then the majority of the population used to be in extreme poverty. Thanks to Tyrest and his policies, this is no longer the case.”

    “Don’t you worship Adaptus too?” asked Nightbeat. “I mean, you are Iaconian and Adaptus is popular there.”

    “Yes, as well as the other members of the Guiding Hand,” replied Xaaron. “Adaptus was so popular in Iacon that those Functionists pushed their corrupt agenda under his name, just to get the people to accept it. The act was so blasphemous that I'm not in the mood to think about right now.” Xaaron took a deep breath and continued, “We must still give these coins to Tyrest and he’d know which legislator he should hand them to.”

    “Aw…” said Nightbeat, “I wanted to help find Adaptica…or at least the city that inspired its legend.”

    “Well, you’d have to ask Tyrest,” said Xaaron. “I’m sure he’d be more than happy to set you up.”

    Nightbeat and Xaaron chatted as they rode in Nightbeat’s cart and headed to the dining room, located in Tyrest’s villa. “I could’ve sworn Tyrest’s compound was Adaptica.”

    “What makes you say that?” asked Xaaron.

    Nightbeat parked and pointed at a random floor tile. It had Adaptus’ symbol lightly etched on it. In fact, the symbol was on the walls and even on the decorations. Xaaron’s eyes widened. He hadn’t noticed them before. “To be fair, the way the legislators spoke about how demons attacked them – I’m sure they’d want to cover this entire compound with tons of holy symbols to prevent another attack.”

    Xaaron noticed the twinkle in Nightbeat’s eyes. Nightbeat wanted nothing more than to get to the bottom of this mystery. But for now, dinner was an order. They arrived at the villa not long after and made their way to the dining room. The Brainmasters and Galaxy Shuttle were already there, setting up the table.

    “They’re going to serve the dumplings,” said Star Saber excitedly.

    “How do you know what they’re going to serve?” asked Blacker.

    Star Saber stopped and pulled out a calendar with the menu. The legislator cooks followed it to the letter, unless there was a special occasion – like when Tyrest was released from the clinic after the assassination attempt. (That day they had veggie burgers, Tyrest’s favorite.) Blacker stopped to read it, before handing it back to Star Saber.

    “Where’d you get that calendar?” asked Blacker.

    “I asked the chief justice for a copy,” said Star Saber. “I wanted to know what they were going to have, ahead of time, so I could order a different plate beforehand, if I didn’t like what was being served. To be fair, all the food is freshly grown and well-prepared that I still just go with the menu regardless.”

    “Can you ask him for another copy for me?” asked Braver. “Sometimes I don’t want to eat food with roasted tomatoes or bell peppers.”

    “Sure,” said Star Saber.

    They had finished up setting the table when they noticed Xaaron and Nightbeat. Xaaron also had his own calendar and was looking forward to the dumplings too. Just then, Tyrest and Pharma ground-bridged to the dining hall. Tyrest led Pharma to a seat next to him and Xaaron, as he sat next to Star Saber. Pharma looked around and noticed a large monochrome painting of Tyrest and his conjunx.

    Xaaron tapped Pharma’s hand and said to him, “They are serving dumplings.”

    “How do you know?” asked Pharma.

    Before Xaaron had a chance to answer, several legislators entered the dining hall serving platters for themselves and for Tyrest and his guests. The dumplings were accompanied by a thick soup, crackers, and salad. For drinks, they were served fresh fruit juice. Pharma grabbed a dumpling with his left hand and stuffed it in his mouth when Braver stood up to lead a quick prayer before dinner. Pharma’s eyes widened and hoped nobody noticed his blunder. As soon as Braver finished, Pharma swallowed the dumpling.

    “Pharma, how is Ratchet doing?” asked Xaaron, nonchalantly as he dipped his dumpling into the sauce.

    “He’s so-so,” replied Pharma. “His arthritis is getting worse and he’s beating himself up over it. He feels so useless because it hurts for him to do anything. I wonder if a transplant, or at least a joint-replacement, would cure him. But then, that’s autoimmune.”

    “I had arthritis too,” said Xaaron. “But it got cured after I got reformatted. Though the pain on my side is getting worse.”

    “What pain?” asked Tyrest, almost offended that Xaaron never told him about it.

    “The one right here,” said Xaaron pointing at his side.

    Without thinking twice, Pharma turned to Xaaron and scanned him. Pharma’s cheerful expression turned quite serious as he analyzed the results.

    “Sir,” whispered Pharma, “you need a t-cog transplant STAT. The next time you transform could be your last because your t-cog is so brittle that it’ll shatter and then you’d get severe sepsis…”

    “It can wait,” replied Xaaron cooly. He then turned to Tyrest and said nonchalantly, “Please get me one of those restraints that inhibit transforming, because I do know that I occasionally transform while sleeping. I also don’t want to miss breakfast because of the mandatory fasting. I’ve been looking forward to those fluffy buttery pancakes for a week.”

    Tyrest gasped and asked, “You care more about food than your own health?”

    “Considering the fact that the Autobots had always had scarce resources, up until recently, yes I do care more about food,” replied Xaaron. “Besides, I am old and sickly. The option of repairing me misuses valuable resources. I much rather enjoy my last few days filling up my belly with delicious food, instead.”

    Tyrest turned to Pharma and Nightbeat, both of whom had experienced similar hardships when it came to a lack of resources. Although it pained them to hear Xaaron speak about himself that way, it was reasonable given their wartime circumstances. Tyrest remained calm, though he was offended by their passiveness. But this wasn’t the first time Tyrest wanted to intervene regarding Xaaron’s poor health.

    On several occasions during the war, Xaaron was secretly space-bridged to Luna-1, to undergo a life-saving procedure. Often, Ratchet accompanied Xaaron and performed the surgery there. Xaaron had always felt guilty about resorting to do things this way, but as chairman of the Autobot High Council, it was important that he survive for the sake of the Autobot Cause. Despite Ratchet’s pleas, Xaaron was never allowed to recover on Luna-1. Instead, Xaaron was space-bridged to a safe location, usually the Wreckers’ base, Debris, in Nyon. While Tyrest did agree with Ratchet in regards to Xaaron staying on Luna-1, he knew that if he allowed such a thing, the Decepticons might use it as a valid argument to back out of the Tyrest Accord, annulling the treaty. The last thing Tyrest wanted was to do something foolish based on his feelings and put thousands of civilian lives at risk. Tyrest made sure to tell Ratchet this the first time Xaaron had surgery on Luna-1, yet Ratchet hoped that Tyrest changed his mind and always pleaded. (Tyrest was a mech of his word and tried his best to keep his promises, unlike most of the other politicians that Ratchet had encountered.)

    “You forget that on Luna-1, I'm the one who decides what is considered a waste of resources,” replied Tyrest coldly. “And making sure you, my dear friend, gets adequate repairs isn’t a waste.”

    Xaaron remained silent. The last thing he wanted was to guilt-trip his friend Tyrest into providing him with a life-saving surgery. It was one of the reasons he had chosen to remain silent about his worsening pain. But the atmosphere was calm and Xaaron felt comfortable-enough to speak freely, and that was when he made his mistake.

    “Very well, I’ll have surgery in the afternoon,” said Xaaron. “At least, I can have my pancakes in the morning.”

    Tyrest pulled out his tablet and searched through it, locating the appropriate forms Xaaron needed to sign stating that he consented to the surgery. He handed him the tablet to sign.

    Wanting to lighten the mood, Star Saber said to Nightbeat, “The Legislators’ Commander was finally released from the clinic. I found it interesting that he referred to the compound as ‘New Adaptica’, considering the fact he wasn’t too happy with us being here.”

    “Wait…if this is ‘New Adaptica’ that means there’s an ‘Old Adaptica’,” replied Nightbeat. “I knew it.”

    “Yes, the ‘Old Adaptica’ was their colony before the demon attack,” said Star Saber, “but I don’t know the location. I’ve tried asking the other legislators but they seemed offended…” Star Saber paused when he saw an older legislator squinting at his direction. “…Did I tell you, that you look really good in gold?”

    “Thanks,” said Nightbeat as soon as he got the cue. “It’s not everyday you get the chance to get coated in pure electrum and feel invulnerable to any damage. Oh no…it’s fading away…” Nightbeat looked at his arm which was reverting back to its natural bright blue color. “How do these legislators keep the gold though?”

    “They mix the electrum with wax and coat that on,” said Star Saber. “Sometimes they just jump in, but most of the time it’s with the wax mixture. It is a secret formula that they refuse to share but that’s reasonable because this invulnerability shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

    The older legislator turned away and resumed his conversation with a fellow legislator. At that, Star Saber and Nightbeat let out a sigh of relief. Their dinner continued normally and Pharma continued to stuff his face with more dumplings. It had been way too long since he had eaten delicious food.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last time Pharma ate a good meal was when Ratchet had invited him over for dinner, with his family of Drift (an adopted son), Drift's twins, and Undertone (Ratchet's youngest biological son). He had managed to eat with the family on three occasions. [The first dinner](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11402775/chapters/33231762), then lunch while he was in the clinic again, and finally a last dinner before he was [taken to be examined with a cortical psychic patch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11402775/chapters/36988641). ~~The other two times weren't mentioned and I realize this now _after_ I re-read/marathoned my own story~~.
> 
> As for the electrum, there is an underground golden lagoon in Tyrest’s compound, as mentioned in [Chapter 22 of “The City of Wonder”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7042765/chapters/16279901). It seems there’s a lot of underground hot springs in that area too. But don’t worry, the houses and other buildings are located on more solid ground.


	5. A Distant Slumber

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone gets ready for bed, but the sleep seems so far away. Fortunately, with a mech named Pharma on the team, a remedy is readily available when needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't thought of tech specs for Pharma too much but I'm pretty sure his "Fireblast" is a solid 10 (actually, should be like 50.) Mostly because he was clearly the only one in MTMTE and LL with nearly perfect aim. His precision, of course, is what made him a much better surgeon than Ratchet, in canon.
> 
> But I'm pretty sure AU!Pharma and canon!Pharma would have different scores, mostly because their "Courage" and "Intelligence" would be very different. But again, this is all speculation – speculation that the fandom circles I’m adjacent to haven’t mentioned or developed. But then, these circles don’t seem to care about TFs as action figures. They only care about ships and a character's stats aren't shippy at all.

    After dinner, everyone sorted their plates to the proper receptacle. The mostly cleaned plates went straight to the dishwasher, and the ones with more food smeared on them went to be washed by hand. Feeling bad because his plate wasn’t clean enough, Tyrest went to help wash dishes. Pharma had no idea where he was and stood in the dining room awkwardly. It didn’t help that legislators were staring at him with their closed eyes.

    Star Saber approached Pharma. Unfortunately, this didn’t make Pharma feel any better. Even though Tyrest sat in between them during dinner, Pharma saw Star Saber remove his helm and then proceed to chug the thick hot soup. After he was finished, he asked Tyrest if he was going to eat his soup since Tyrest didn’t touch it. Tyrest said he wasn’t because he was filling up on dumplings and crackers. Star Saber got Tyrest’s soup and chugged it too. What Pharma saw filled him with immense horror.

    “Nice hands,” said Star Saber.

    “Thank you,” said Pharma.

    “I wish the chief justice would install some of those experimental upgrades in me,” replied Star Saber. “However, the chief justice doesn’t believe in ‘unnecessary’ surgery. He thinks it’s vanity, but I simply want to become the best warrior Cybertron has ever known.”

    “That’s understandable,” said Pharma, who was beginning to relax. “We can’t get a good gauge of our stats. The tech specs are awful. They give 8s, 9s, and 10s to practically everyone. Do you really expect me to believe that the chief justice and I are both 10s in ‘intelligence’? I only spoke to him for a few minutes and I feel like an utter dumbass compared to him. He knows a lot about things I know nothing about. How can we both be 10s? He’s clearly a 35.”

    Star Saber listened solemnly even though he was shocked by Pharma saying bad words. (Something he expected from the likes of Lockdown, but not a properly educated mech who also happens to be holy.) After getting over his shock, which was brief, Star Saber said, “A word of warning, please watch your language around the chief justice. He hates it when others use bad words around him. He thinks they are vulgar and loses all interest in interacting with such people.”

    The last thing Pharma wanted to do was offend Tyrest. Pharma gasped. “Oh f*ck!”

    Star Saber facepalmed. While he completely accepted that Pharma had a 10 in “intelligence”, he wondered if “common sense” was even a stat in the tech specs, because it seemed like Pharma barely had any.

    Unfortunately, Xaaron and Nightbeat were nearby and heard him say bad words. Xaaron was disappointed while Nightbeat was intrigued. Fortunately, Tyrest didn’t hear any of it because he was busy helping with the dishwashing and happily chatting with some of the younger legislators whom he could still understand. (Apparently, the legislators’ voices got “too soft” as they aged, at least for Tyrest who could only hear the sparklings and the adolescents.)

    As Xaaron approached Pharma, a pair of legislators intercepted his path and showed him the transformation-inhibiting restraint. The restraints also included handcuffs, but since Xaaron wasn’t a criminal, the legislators didn’t handcuff him. Xaaron took the handcuffs, which also had the transformation-inhibiting ability, and put it on his left wrist like a bracelet. A legislator activated the ability and Xaaron immediately felt the difference. It was actually worse than being without it. Pharma rushed over to him and asked, “Do you want them to take it off of you?”

    “No,” gasped Xaaron. “I have an idea.”

    Just then, Tyrest left the kitchen and immediately noticed that Xaaron was in terrible pain. Without thinking twice, Tyrest said to Pharma, “Please stay with Emirate Xaaron for the night.”

    “Where is Ten going to go?” asked Nightbeat.

    “Ten will sleep with me,” said Tyrest. He then turned to the young legislator and gestured to him to come over. Tyrest pulled out a phone and handed it to Pharma. “This phone has my number, should you or my friend need anything.” Tyrest pulled out a teleporter and opened a ground-bridge to Xaaron’s room.

    Pharma attempted to pick up Xaaron, only to realize that the “light” mini-tank was actually quite heavy. Pharma and Nightbeat helped Xaaron walk to the room.

    Pharma and Nightbeat helped Xaaron to bed. Without thinking twice, Pharma grabbed an opened, but clipped, bag of chips. He took out three small broken chips and held them in his right hand. With his left hand, he retracted a scalpel and lightly sliced his left thumb. He mumbled something as the blood dripped onto the chips, activating the transmutation circle engraved into his hand. Nightbeat grabbed Xaaron’s water bottled and handed it to him, as Pharma approached him with a pill.

    “This potent analgesic should numb the pain considerably, though there is a risk it’ll make you sleepy,” said Pharma, as he then continued his brief explanation about the drug.

    Wincing in pain, Xaaron grabbed the pill out of Pharma’s hand and took it, then drank out of his water bottle. “How long until this kicks in?”

    “Give about 5 minutes,” said Pharma.

    “It already kicked in…” said Xaaron, who felt instant relief.

    “You…” said Pharma to Nightbeat, “Please bring me his toothpaste, tooth brush, a small cup, and a bowl or whatever kind of basin you can find. I don’t think he’d be able to brush his teeth in the bathroom.”

    As Nightbeat gathered the items, Pharma transmuted a small scrap of paper he found on the table and turned it into a small dollop of antibiotic. After applying it to his thumb, he grabbed a random bandage he saw on the table and put it on. Xaaron observed Pharma and asked, “Who in their right mind decided to send you to Delphi?”

    “I wanted to go,” replied Pharma.

    “But why?” asked Xaaron. “Whatever you just did with those medicines is a valuable skill that we Autobots desperately needed during the war. Especially, since our supplies were always so low.”

    “When I was a sparkling, I ran into these Unicron cultists that pulled out my vocalizer with an enchanted hook and engraved a necromantic sigil on it,” replied Pharma. “I’ve spent most of my life, absolutely terrified of others finding out I’m a necromancer. Not really thinking things clearly, but also in a desperate need to get away from my family, I decided to study medicine because the university was far away. Obviously, being a medic just had a tendency to make me practice the necromancy I was cursed with. Later, I reanimated someone who was certainly going to die. I felt awful for his two young sparklings becoming orphaned, especially since the local orphanages were terrible. This ‘miracle’ nearly blew my cover, so I had no choice but to escape to Delphi.”

    “I assume that Ratchet doesn’t know about most of this,” said Xaaron.

    Pharma went pale.

    “I’m just saying, because if he _did_ know, he would’ve given you prudent advice and your life wouldn’t have escalated into this disastrous series of events you’re describing,” replied Xaaron.

    Nightbeat returned with the supplies and handed them to Xaaron so he could brush his teeth. Pharma quietly held the cup and the bowl for Xaaron to spit in.

    Meanwhile, Tyrest and Ten had finished dusting each other off for the night. Sensing that Tyrest seemed upset, Ten asked, “What’s wrong?”

    “I’m hurt that Xaaron doesn’t trust me enough to tell me that he’s in physical pain,” replied Tyrest.

    “Oh, that had nothing to do with trust,” said Ten. “He had told me and Nightbeat, that if you found out, you’d be worried and that you already have enough problems to deal with, without counting this. He was hoping it was just a random sprain that would heal itself eventually. But it wasn't the case.”

    Tyrest was still unsatisfied with the answer. “I should’ve suspected something was wrong ever since he stopped sneaking into my room and jumping on my bed. I know he’s being playful but I don’t like those types of surprises and I was relieved when I finally had peace.”

    “What if you sneaked into his room and jumped on his bed?” asked Ten.

    “The combination of my excellent stealth and size, would prove fatal,” said Tyrest. “Besides, I don’t like mean games like that. Besides, it’s time for our bedtime prayers.”

    “Ten!” replied Ten out loud. Seeing Ten’s excitement, both of them walked over to the small shrine in the room and began to pray.

    Unlike Tyrest and Ten, Xaaron still wasn’t sleep and neither were Nightbeat, and Pharma. (Pharma would’ve been sleepy too but so many things had happened to him in the past 24 hours that he felt unable to power-down.) Noticing the time, and the fact that Pharma was the one who was likely to perform the surgery, Xaaron asked, “Pharma, would it be too difficult for you to make a sleep potion?”

    Looking at his hand, Pharma replied, “Not if we’re able to find the actual ingredients. I don’t want to slice up these new fingers, they’re very sensitive. The one I nicked hurts as if I struck a nerve. I didn’t think I’d cut that deep either.” He saw a small piece of paper and wrote down the ingredients. Assuming that Xaaron wanted them all to sleep, Pharma wrote the different quantities for 1, 2, and 3 people.

    Reading the ingredients, Xaaron said, “All of these are found in that ‘Root Garden’ in the Atrium. Nightbeat, take the teleporter and gather the ingredients. Pharma, you stay with me, and I’ll write a note saying we picked some herbs from the garden. I don’t think he minds as long as the plants are unharmed but it’s courteous to inform him.” Pausing, Xaaron added, “Don’t take too long.”

    After reading the list, Nightbeat got the teleporter that was lying on the small couch and headed out to the Root Garden. Somewhat disappointed that Xaaron didn’t allow him to explore it at night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ## This is my headcanon/hypothesis for Chief Justice Tyrest's Tech Specs (my Christmas gift to you!):
> 
>   * **Strength - 10** Easily carried Ultra Magnus. He is strong. He also has inner strength from his steadfastness. But in the tech specs, this rating refers to physical power. However, I feel the inner strength needed to be addressed.
>   * **Intelligence - 10** Let’s see; invented the Magnus Armor, designed that space bridge, helped create cold constructed TFs, invented the Killswitch, gave Pharma back his hands, probably built that staff of his, too smart to be brainwashed by Skids, practically the god of wisdom, etc. Not to mention, that he is intelligent-enough to want to resolve matters peacefully.
>   * **Speed - 6*** There’s no proof he is fast or slow. It is safe to assume he is of average speed. Although, he is said to be a “Hypersonic Jet”, it’s possible that he can easily go past Mach 5. However, due to the numerous perforations all over his frame, he doesn’t go too fast nowadays.
>   * **Endurance - 9**  He survived the drilling in the head (which other characters did not) and the rocket launcher to the stomach. Had he been rebuilt by someone more competent, he’d have survived another more brutal attack too.
>   * **Rank - 9** “Chief Justice” seems like a pretty high-ranking position, but then this tends to apply to factions whereas he’s now a former Autobot/neutral. Also, given the fact he doesn’t like to lead, mostly because it’s very stressful, I think this is justifiable. 
>   * **Courage - 10**  Prior to the Lost Light series, I thought he was a 3 for this. But then, I was looking at him through a more antagonistic standard. But since his peace maker abilities were finally mentioned and emphasized, I decided to look at this again. Even though he was clearly a more shy and timid character, getting the courage to personally take matters into his own hands is commendable. From peace making, to Killswitch-making, to shooting the arc’s main antagonist, he personally attempted to right his own wrongs. Something that many of the other characters don’t even bother to do.
>   * **Fireblast - 1**  In canon it was stated that he was a terrible warrior. (No, this was not a taunt, this is 100% fact.) But then, Tyrest was always a timid, gentle nerd who didn’t want to fight anyone anyway. He couldn’t even fatally shoot the mech who fully deserved it, and just maimed his arm. I was going to give him a 2, but then that is my bias.
>   * **Skill - 10**  A polymath deserves no less. Even if he can’t fight anyone directly, he can figure out what to do based on his immense knowledge. He is very talented and I love him for it.
> 

> 
> *This could be a 10, if he were in a better physical state. 
> 
> (I had developed my tech specs headcanon for him since 2016. But this new updated list is more accurate due to canonical developments. Also, AU!Tyrest has these same scores but for slightly different reasons.)


	6. The Lost Prodigy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pharma makes a potion, I mean, some tea for Xaaron and himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No clue why Pharma acts like a Shakespearean protagonist in this chapter, but I went with it.

    Nightbeat had been curious about the Root Garden, ever since had heard about it last week. While he had seen it many time since he first arrived to Luna-1, he never thought about exploring it. It was certainly different at night, ethereal and practically otherworldly. He noticed a raised plaque on the floor. As he approached it, a faint pink star-like rune appeared over it and got brighter as Nightbeat got closer. The plaque read, “ _In Memoriam 99999682._ ”

    He immediately recognized it as a grave and made a mental note of the number. He also backed away from it because the rune was clearly placed there to protect it. As he moved further away, the rune’s glow became fainter. Taking out a small pair of scissors, Nightbeat snipped the herbs required for two doses of the potion. After all, it was important for both Xaaron and Pharma to rest, since they had the surgery tomorrow. As for himself, Nightbeat only wanted to live up to his name and do some investigating after dark. When he finished, he pulled out the teleporter, but noticed something moving in the shadows. Torn between wanting to investigate the movement and promptly returning to Xaaron’s room, he chose the latter because the last thing he wanted was for his mentor to scold him.

    Meanwhile, Xaaron said to Pharma. “Don’t tell this to Nightbeat, but the Root Garden is actually a grave.”

    Pharma frowned.

    “Tyrest told me that his carrier is buried there,” said Xaaron. “Not sure if you can, but it would be nice for you to channel Adaptus and grant a blessing to the garden, as well as the Legislators’ Necropolis. There’s been a disturbing increase in undead activity these past few weeks. It was contained on the ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ but seems to be spreading. And now you, the Reincarnation of Adaptus, has arrived just in the right moment to help end it.”

    Pharma let out a dejected sigh. INo matter where he went, the undead would be lurking about. (However, it appears virtually impossible for Cybertronians to stay dead. They’re a naturally immortal race, and even if they appear to be successfully killed, they can come back as unstoppable ghouls.) And he was also exhausted from feeling overburdened – he had not recovered from having to illegally perform alchemy to support the leader of the DJD’s drug habit. To Pharma, it seemed that having holy energon was more of a curse than being forcibly branded with a necromantic sigil.

    Unfortunately, he didn't have a chance to express his concerns because Nightbeat arrived and handed the ingredients to Pharma. He got the herbs and began grinding them. Fortunately, Xaaron had an electric burner on top of a small table, and Pharna didn't need to go to the kitchen to boil the water from the water cooler in the room.  As Pharma was working, Nightbeat whispered to Xaaron, “You’re not going to believe what I saw at the Root Garden.”

    “What?” asked Xaaron.

    “There’s a grave there,” said Nightbeat.

    Annoyed, Xaaron said, “Leave it alone! Tyrest’s carrier is buried there.”

    Nightbeat pouted, since that mystery was already solved. “The chief justice, told you, didn’t he?”

    “Yes,” replied Xaaron. “He also told me that the Root Garden was made up of plants that are common in the Sea of Rust. But also, it’s the only place in Luna-1’s entirety where he can successfully grow cassava. He loves that root so much. But he still has to have it imported because the ones from the garden are too small.”

    After grinding the herbs, Pharma decided to boil them in a small pot on the burner. Confused, Nightbeat said to Pharma, “I thought you were going to do alchemy and transmute potions, not make a tea like normal people.”

    “I would need a lot of blood for that,” said Pharma. “Besides, I’d rather do this naturally especially since you got me all the ingredients for it. Back at Delphi, I drew my own blood, filling vials of it, so I wouldn’t have to cut myself so much. But all that took a toll on me since the food rations were…terrible and I grew weaker by the day. The only reason I recovered was because Adaptus reformatted by body. I did do an experiment with a patient’s blood instead of using my own but it wasn’t the same. I suspect it’s because of my holy energon blood, what I transmuted with it was always of a superior quality compared to the regular energon blood.”

    Nightbeat rinsed out two mugs in the bathroom sink and brought them to Pharma, who had finished boiling the tea. He carefully poured the tea into the mugs. Since they didn’t have ice on hand and both mugs were almost filled to the brim, Nightbeat filled another basin with water and placed the mugs inside it for them to cool. Xaaron was excited for the tea, its fragrance was making his stomach rumble. Nightbeat also wanted to try the tea and regretted gathering only two servings. He didn’t think the ingredients mixed together would smell or possibly taste pleasant.

    After waiting for a couple of minutes, Pharma took both mugs and handed one to Xaaron. “If you drink it too fast, you’d pass out.”

    “I see…” replied Xaaron as he watched Pharma chug the tea, because he was tired and moments later, collapsed on the bed with Xaaron.

    Xaaron set the alarm to a reasonable hour and tried to chug the rest of the tea. Feeling weak, he set it aside on the nightstand and before he knew it, he had passed out too. Since Xaaron had a little left, Nightbeat wondered whether or not he should try it. He picked up the mug and walked over to his own bed. He took a sip, and since he was a speedster, his body metabolized the tea too fast that he was also immediately knocked out. 

* * *

    Several hours had passed and the alarm went off, waking everyone up.

    “What the hell just happened?” asked Pharma.

    “We drank that tea you made,” said Xaaron, who felt refreshed.

    “Oh,” said Pharma. He hadn’t had a good restful sleep that it felt strange to him. He got up and went to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

    Nightbeat approached Xaaron and whispered, “Emirate, are you sure you want this mech to perform surgery on you?”

    “Tell me one other Autobot medic who is as equally competent as Ratchet, who’d be able to perform this surgery today,” said Xaaron.

    “Damn,” replied Nightbeat. “The only other medic I know is my sister Minerva and she’s busy working with Muzzle back on Nebulos.”

    “I don’t doubt Pharma’s ability,” said Xaaron. “He must be an extremely talented surgeon, so talented that it’s probably why he seems so…I mean, you saw him make that tea and observed its effectiveness.”

    Pharma returned and helped Xaaron get up and walked with him to the bathroom. Assuming that Xaaron drank most of the tea, Pharma knew that Xaaron was still at a risk for falling. Xaaron brushed his teeth and Pharma helped Xaaron sit down on the couch. Meanwhile, Nightbeat went to the bathroom and suddenly, his legs gave out and he fell down. Pharma rushed to his aid, as the bedroom door opened and a legislator walked in with a cart that had three breakfast platters on it.

    Aware of Xaaron’s condition, the legislator unfolded a small table and placed it in front of Xaaron. He then served the platter, handed Xaaron the silverware, and served him some milk. Xaaron got the bottle of syrup and poured it on his pancakes. After a quick prayer, he began to eat. Not long afterwards, Pharma and Nightbeat joined him since Xaaron ate slowly.

    Grabbing a fork, Pharma was incredulous of Xaaron's claim about the pancakes. However, after taking a single bite, Pharma got up and walked around the room as Nightbeat and Xaaron desperately tried to ignore Pharma's bizarre behavior. Pharma sat down and said, “This is so good.”

    “I told you,” replied Xaaron. “The cooks in the kitchen are something else. They were saying they were going to prepare something they call ‘Quintessence’, which they keep describing as an ætherial stew. They just need to harvest the final ingredient for it.”

    “Is that final ingredient Quintesson?” asked Pharma.

    Xaaron appeared disgusted and said, “I don’t know but I can see how you came to that conclusion.”

    “I’ve been told that Quintesson tastes light and soft,” said Pharma, remembering back at Delphi when Tarn was telling him about his latest adventure. The DJD actually hunted more Quintessons than they did Decepticon traitors on The List. One of the members, Helex the smelting tank, loved to eat the Quintessons’ brains. Tarn himself preferred to eat their tentacles deep-fried and dipped in ketchup.

    “Quintesson does taste good,” said Nightbeat. “From my research on the subject, it was originally proposed as psychological warfare against them. The first time Cybertronians tried it was just for the irony but then it turns out they loved the taste that it’s now completely sincere and unironic.”

    “Those animals are nasty,” insisted Xaaron, who immediately felt his appetite disappear. Fortunately, he had finished eating his rations.

    Nightbeat and Pharma both continued to insist that it tasted good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I _did_ plan to make a mention of cooking Quintesson in this story, but decided to might as well state it now, to get that weird little trivia out of the way. And no, Tarn had never offered Pharma any Quintesson. Most likely because its a delicacy and leftovers are nonexistent.


	7. The Codex of Sorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Star Saber schemes with his friends because that's what friends do together...I think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just like [Chapter 4](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16172519/chapters/38758322), this chapter also references things from a filler story I have on Google Docs because I can't think of a title. (If I ever do get around to posting it, I'll remove this part of the notes.)
> 
> This chapter is what happens when I'm left to my own devices and just do whatever. I had no clue where I was going with this but I like it. Also, it wasn't beta-read because everyone I could've asked was busy and I got busy IRL too!

    In the dining room, The Brainmasters and Galaxy Shuttle were eating breakfast with the rest of his teammates. 

    “Yesterday, when I was teaching the chief justice, I asked him what the ‘Quintessence’ that the legislators have been excited over was all about,” said Star Saber. “From what I’ve seen on the calendar, it’s a pretty big holiday but there was never any explanation for it. The chief justice told me it was a stew that the legislators liked to cook during this time, and that he found it disgusting.”

    As Star Saber explained, one of the auxiliary teachers entered the dining hall. She was a red and gray minibot, that the Brainmasters didn’t notice her. Clearing her throat, she asked, “Hi, excuse me, I was just about to ask what this Quintessence Day was all about? I see it on the calendar and notice it’s a pretty big deal since my students have 3 days off for it.”

    “Lug, don’t they celebrate that in the Sea of Rust too?” asked Laster.

    “Yes, but nobody over there really knows what it’s about,” replied Lug. “Only that ‘the native inhabitants of Luna-1, observe this holiday’. I don’t think they care, to be honest. Otherwise, there would be more information online about it.”

    “To put it simply…” said Star Saber, “…they eat Quintesson stew. They call it ‘Quintessence’ because the meat is said to be light in both how your intake tank can tolerate it and its taste. They prepare a lot of it, like enough for the whole community, and eat it together. The rest of the days is resting after eating that big meal.”

    “Is it good?” asked Lug.

    “I don’t know,” said Star Saber. “Eating Quintesson meat is one of those things that’s subject to debate. Some insist that it’s unclean despite its supposedly light and ‘pure’ taste. Others say it’s okay to eat as long as the meat is thoroughly cooked. To play it safe, I have never tried it.” The other Brainmasters and Galaxy Shuttle nodded in agreement.

    “Do you think they’d let me try some?” asked Lug.

    “I don’t see why they wouldn’t,” replied Star Saber.

    “Alright, that’s what I needed to know, thank you,” replied Lug as she exited the room. She hurried to tell her conjunx, a fellow auxiliary teacher, who was standing outside waiting for her. She was an average sized green plane. Although she was much taller than Lug, she was also quite timid, despite being the more talkative one. (She was unable to ask the Brainmasters herself because she saw them train once and their vicious duels scared her.)

    Narrowing his eyes, Laster asked, “It’s kind of weird that nobody has done research on this holiday, don’t you think?”

    “Maybe people don’t want to think about Quintessons,” said Blacker, who was picking at his scab from a cut he received earlier during training.

    “Cut that out!” snapped Braver who smacked Blacker’s hand away.

    “Since we’re not going to participate in the feast, I have a better suggestion in passing the time,” replied Star Saber, who got up from his seat and separated himself from his aerial trailer – the V-Star. He searched through the V-Star and found a binder, which he laid out on the table. Inside the binder were photocopies from a codex that wasn’t permitted to leave the chief justice’s personal library. The copies showed a city whose layout was in the shape of Adaptus’ symbol.

    “How did they let you make copies?” asked Braver. “The last time we tried to ask about Adaptica, they got so upset that Tyrest himself teleported to our location to intervene.”

    “I told them I wanted to read a manuscript about Adaptus, which I did, and a librarian gave it to me,” said Star Saber. “It’s obviously Primus’ will for us to have this information. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sent Lug’s conjunx, Anode, to the library so she could ask about allowing her preschool students to come visit the library. Then this request held up several of the senior librarians, who were unsure about such young sparklings visiting, that the only one left to attend me was a young, novice librarian who wouldn’t have known better. Then, I asked for the ‘correct’ manuscript by title, just so the others wouldn’t get suspicious.”

    “Everyone would be so busy celebrating, that we’d have time to meditate over these copies in peace,” replied Laster, “perfect.”

    “Are we going to tell Nightbeat?” asked Galaxy Shuttle.

    “Yes, but after we finish meditating over these texts,” replied Star Saber.

    “I want to know why the little sparklings aren’t allowed in the library,” said Blacker. “I figured they would since they’re so well-behaved and there is such a heavy emphasis on them learning.”

    “This library is for scholarly texts,” said Braver. “Although there is some erotica on the top floor…”

    “How do _you_ know?” asked Laster.

    “Because I went to the top floor, since I like to see what’s available in the library,” replied Braver. "That's where they archive all the older, outdated books. You can still check them out but they strongly advise that the information may be outdated. They practically treat these books like 'fiction'. Anyway, they've been hiding it there."

    On that particular day, Braver went upstairs and went to a secluded corner of the library. He noticed that the books in this corner used a different coding than the other ones. Curious, he picked up a random book to read it. As he read, he sensed that a librarian was standing not too far away from him, nervously. After reading a particular passage, he knew why. Braver quickly closed the book and put on his headphones, so he could speak to the librarian. It was then, that the librarian confessed that this was a secret collection and that they hoped their priests would never find it, or else they’d complain to their queen, Tyrest. (Tyrest, who appeared to be very frag-repulsed, would likely order the books destroyed and the library staff replaced. Especially since this was _his_ private library and these books weren't his.) The librarian insisted that the reason they stored these books here was because it was the safest library to keep them in. The other library was under stricter regulations because everything there needed to be 'polite' and 'appropriate for an impressionable sparkling to read'. Braver said nothing about what he had found, until now. But then, he was disappointed with their collection because it was tastelessly bland, like fanfiction that reduces complex characters into simple generic tropes.

    Star Saber took back the copies of the codex and stored them in the V-Star. He then attempted to merge with his trailer but could not. As he curled up to fit in the trailer’s armor, he was a bit too wide and bounced off. Star Saber tried one more time and was unable to connect.

    Rolling his eyes, Laster said to him, “I told you that if you eat too much, you wouldn’t be able to fit in the V-Star.”

    Remembering that he ate three servings of pancakes with the extra syrup, Star Saber muttered, “Shut up.” He snapped his fingers and the V-Star resumed its aerial trailer form. Annoyed, Star Saber hopped on top, causing it to wobble from his excess weight. To save face, Galaxy Shuttle pulled out a transporter and opened a portal directly to the chapel, where they normally continued with their morning prayers.

    Upon arrival, they were met with two of the legislators’ clergy-mechs – fiercely devoted to Adaptus and because of this, much of their religious items bared Adaptus’ green symbol. It had been about a week since they began using the chapel. (Before, they held their services underneath a tent, which they quickly assembled and disassembled. Apparently, the religious décor clashed too much with their secular golden hexagonal décor, and that was why they had long decided it like this. For some reason, no one thought about asking Tyrest for permission to host the chapel in his villa. Even though he happily attended services all these years with them.) The clergy-mechs were trying to redecorate the chapel, which already matched nicely with their religious items.

    The clergy-mechs noticed Star Saber riding the V-Star and seemed to mumble to themselves about him. No one, but Star Saber's friends, knew that he was an average-sized mech wearing power-armor. (Everyone assumed he was naturally that large, especially since his power levels were very high.) Curious, Blacker turned on his translating headphones and overheard the clergy-mechs.

    “Do you think the queen is aware of his size?” asked one of them.

    “No,” replied the other, “if he did, he wouldn’t be interested in him. I had a feeling this was all too good to be true. He’s going to find out eventually and be so heartbroken.”

    Blacker shot a quick glance at Star Saber, who was doing some stretching before the prayers began. Star Saber was oblivious to the conversation and Blacker hoped it stayed that way, otherwise Star Saber would be compelled to defend his honor. (As in, he’d challenge both large legislators to a fight for mocking his appearance, even if he was half their size. After all, Star Saber had the Brain of Courage and wasn’t afraid of anyone.)

    As Star Saber was stretching, Braver noticed a binder sticking out strangely from the V-Star. He pulled it out and noticed that the panels on the V-Star were flat again. He turned around and said to Star Saber, “You should try to merge with the V-Star again. I think one of your binders may’ve shifted.”

    He handed Star Saber the binder. Star Saber opened it up and it was the first binder he had complied his photocopies in, because the first page was a copy that said “The Codex of Sorrow” in an archaic form of Primal Vernacular. Star Saber put the binder in his subspace, which was full of snacks, and merged with his trailer. This time, it all fit and he reverted back to his stately size. Once everyone was settled they began their prayers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   * Anode and Lug were in the untitled filler story referenced in the author's notes in the beginning of this chapter. In fact, that was when they were first hired to teach the preschooler legislator sparklings. I will try to work them into other scenes later just to mess with some of y'all.  
> 
>   * Star Saber wears power armor (the V-Star) in the same way he does in Victory. Sadly, he didn't do this in IDW, where he could've distracted Cyclonus with the V-Star and then moved in for the kill. But I guess JRO didn't know to make him have a badass fight scene.  
> 
>   * Tyrest's canonical religiosity has thrown me for a loop. MTMTE made it seem like he was one of those secular hedonistic politicians who had a near-death experience and then became born-again religious. (In this AU, I tried to somewhat reflect that except he wasn't hedonistic, he was just lapsed religious because almost everyone around him wasn't religious, so he didn't practice for years but his faith was still right there.) In Lost Light, it seemed like he was religious all along and not a zealous convert. So yes, this is more awkward retconning.  
> 
> 



	8. A Date with Fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pharma performs the surgery on Xaaron, while Nightbeat, Tyrest, Ten, and a couple of other legislators observe.

    The afternoon came and it was finally time for surgery. Nearly everyone who knew about the surgery was nervous for Emirate Xaaron. In the past, he had always suffered from complications due to is frail health. Meanwhile, Pharma remained nonchalant about it all. He wasn’t sure if it was because he was so nervous that his mind deleted thinking about the surgery’s consequences, or that he had a lot of practice from installing t-cogs into Tarn, the DJD’s leader who happened to be a tank. Regardless, Pharma was busy creating the perfect anesthetic for Xaaron based on his medical history and known drug allergies.

    Unfortunately Pharma remembered that the clinic on Luna-1 had the appropriate medications in stock, _after_ he transmuted the ingredients and had begun to grind them with his mortar and pestle. (However, since Delphi was the complete opposite of this, Pharma had no choice but to create his own medicines.) It was then, when Nightbeat walked in and realized what Pharma had done. Nightbeat was in awe because he rarely seen mechs live up to their name.

    Nightbeat had decided to meet up with Pharma. He too was nervous about his mentor’s surgery and thought observing Pharma create his drugs would help distract him. (He also needed a break from his research.)

    “I heard that the week after the Quintessence Day, the legislator sparklings are going to space-bridge to Kalis and visit the Kalisian Museum of Rustic Antiquities and Art,” said Nightbeat. “I want to go too, but I’m not sure if they’d let me join. I’m not related to any of those kids or a school staff member.”

    “Can’t you go on your own?” asked Pharma as he inspected the powder he was making. From what Xaaron had told them, they were allowed space-bridge access as long as it was necessary. Nightbeat was fixated on finding Adaptica, and that seemed like a permissible reason.

    “I won’t get to go to the park afterwards and have the picnic with them,” pouted Nightbeat.

    Pharma blinked rapidly, caught by surprise by Nightbeat’s notion of fun. After composing himself, he replied, “Oh yeah, I heard field trips were fun.”

    “You’ve never been to one have you?” asked Nightbeat.

    “The closest was going to the anatomy theatre during med school,” chuckled Pharma. “I always sneaked in snacks.”

    Nightbeat stared at Pharma.

    Rolling his eyes, Pharma scoffed, “Don’t tell me you never sneaked in snacks into a theater. What are you? Lawfully good?”

    “They dissect cadavers there!” cried Nightbeat.

    Pharma shrugged while Nightbeat stood there in disbelief. Pharma finished making his powder and carefully dumped it into a vial, which he quickly sealed. Since Nightbeat was still there, Pharma said, “All I have to do is mix this with water, shake it well, and then administer it into the emirate.”

    He stored the vial in his subspace and headed to a conference room. Another legislator stopped Nightbeat, since only medical personnel were allowed inside. The legislators in the room had translating headphones and handed them to Pharma so he could overhear their briefing over the upcoming surgery.

    Meanwhile, Nightbeat was taken to Xaaron’s room. Xaaron had arrived a few minutes before and was quietly praying. As much as he hated to admit, he was nervous about the surgery too. It just didn’t feel right without Ratchet, the only medic whom he trusted completely.

    Wanting to break the silence, Nightbeat said, “I always wanted to watch a t-cog surgery.  I always thought the concept of Rossum’s Trinity was interesting – if either the t-cog, the brain module, or the spark is destroyed, a mech will die. And yet, if they’re removed without destroying any of them, the mech will still live.”

    “Wait, didn’t Rossum die because Overlord crushed his head?” asked Xaaron.

    “Nope,” replied Nightbeat. “You see, Rossum was a mnemosurgeon, and mnemosurgeons are smart-enough to reconfigure their insides so that their brain modules are no longer in their heads. That way another mnemosurgeon won’t probe their mind easily to steal their ideas or tamper with their memories.”

    Xaaron narrowed his eyes. He pulled out his phone and texted Tyrest, asking if it was possible for a mech to have his brain module located somewhere besides the head. Unsure whether or not his friend was serious, Tyrest replied, “No, but sometimes it seems that way based on their poor decisions.”

    Moments later, a legislator came in and scooped up Xaaron to take him to the operating table. Just then, he received a text message from Tyrest, asking him to accompany him on the second story of the clinic. Nightbeat hurried to the room, that Tyrest mentioned, and saw that it was like a luxury box with an excellent view of the surgery room below. Tyrest greeted him and escorted him inside.

    “Remember how we used to watch the Aequitas Trials?” asked Tyrest.

    “Yeah,” replied Nightbeat.

    “Well, this time, it’s actually pleasant and educational,” said Tyrest, who sat down next to Ten. Tyrest searched through his subspace and pulled out two veggie wraps, one for himself and the other for Ten. He pulled out a third, smaller wrap and offered it to Nightbeat.

    “Why did you bring food?!” asked Nightbeat.

    Tyrest shook his head. “It seems you _don’t_ remember the Aequitas Trials at all because we…you, me, Xaaron, and Prowl…we had mini banquets. Prowl always brought the most food, but then it was fair because he ate the most.” Tyrest chuckled and neatly unwrapped the plastic from Ten’s wrap.

    Ten took a bite of his wrap.

    Nightbeat looked at his small (normal-sized) wrap and unwrapped the plastic. He still didn’t think it was appropriate to eat in these types of viewings, but perhaps he was more interested in observing than stuffing his face and socializing.

    “I feel bad for Lug,” said Tyrest. “She wanted to watch the surgery but Anode likes to follow her around like cleavers. Anode can’t stand watching these types of surgeries. She tried to once, but she fainted. I’m sure it would be much worse, if it’s someone she has spoken to and knows, like Xaaron.” Tyrest unwrapped his wrap and started to eat.

    At this point, Nightbeat was relaxed-enough that he quickly ate his wrap, so he could concentrate on watching the surgery. The wrap was pleasant and didn't upset his stomach. Ten looked through his subspace and pulled out a notebook and pen. Tyrest had instructed him to take notes because he was going to quiz him about the surgery later. (And if Ten passed, he’d be more lenient towards the Duly Appointed Duty of the Tyrest Accord prerequisites.)

    “I’ve always been a strong believer in fate, you know?” said Tyrest. “Xaaron was bound to have this problem eventually. And knowing him, he would never allow a Decepticon perform the operation. Ideally, he’d want Ratchet to do it but that’s not possible. Instead, it’s Ratchet’s student. This was meant to be.”

    It seemed like just about everything was leading to this moment. There was tension in the air. Pharma, of course, had no idea he was being observed by Tyrest, Nightbeat, Ten, and a couple of other curious legislators. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have slouched or reverted to his cruder Stanixian accent, as he removed Xaaron’s restraint.

    He administered his homemade anesthetic into Xaaron’s left antecubital IV, which had an immediate effect on Xaaron. (Xaaron hadn’t realized he was drugged. It was as if he fell asleep from exhaustion.) Seeing that Xaaron was stable, Pharma began to work. Being a light tank, Pharma was easily able to open up Xaaron.

    Unfortunately, the t-cog looked very brittle, more so that it was now exposed to the air. The t-cog would disintegrate upon the slightest touch. It was difficult for Pharma to not resort back into old habits, as in necromancy. Even though he had only know Xaaron for a few hours, he knew that Xaaron would never forgive him if he attempted such a thing. (Xaaron of course, despite being retired, was too much of a powerful Autobot to get on his bad side.) A thought suddenly occurred to him and Pharma moved to the head of the bed. He opened Xaaron’s chassis and exposed his spark. He then, opened up his own spark and moved closer to Xaaron.

    He said to one of the legislators, “Get the jar and the spare. I have to be quick for this.”

    As soon as the legislators were ready, Pharma moved his spark closer to Xaaron’s spark. Upon close proximity, Pharma felt his spark lightly zapping Xaaron’s spark, causing Xaaron to immediately turn to solid gold. At that moment, Pharma went to go grab Xaaron’s gold t-cog and pulled it out, chucking it into the jar. The other legislator handed him the spare and Pharma began to install it. As he worked, Xaaron resumed his normal color and the legislator holding the jar gasped – the t-cog had turned to dust. Fortunately, it was safely removed that Xaaron was unaffected by its inevitable destruction. Pharma still vacuumed Xaaron as a precaution and closed him up. The surgery took 30 minutes and most of the time was spent on opening up Xaaron.

    Nightbeat’s jaw dropped. He figured that the surgery would take at least an hour and a half. However, he had no idea that Pharma had been operating on Tarn back at Messantine and Pharma had no choice but to be quick about it.

    Ten wiggled excitedly in his seat. He may not have known much about medicine, but he knew the surgery was a success. He finished writing his notes and put them away in his subspace. Tyrest reached over and patted Ten’s head.

    “We’ll visit Xaaron much later after that drug wears off,” said Tyrest. “Little bots like him are easily startled, especially by big bots like us, and then he’s a tank. Tanks are volatile no matter their size.”

    Pharma got a clean rag and wiped the sweat off his face. He couldn’t remember the last time an operation made him nervous, but then he needed a reminder to keep his hubris in check.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ten wants to be a Duly Appointed Deputy of the Tyrest Accord because he dreams of working under his hero, Ultra Magnus. However, Tyrest feels that Ten isn't apt for the position (he thinks that Ten cannot handle seeing a brutal crime scene in person and that he's incapable of killing a violator in cold blood). This is why Tyrest actively scheming against Ten in a vain attempt to discourage him. He's tried numerous times, but always underestimates Ten's determination.
> 
> The Pharma from this AU hails from Stanix, a _Decepticon_ city-state. However, Pharma was never a Decepticon to begin with. He was a neutral who almost immediately sided with the Autobots.
> 
> Rossum may or may not be alive. It's too early to tell but then TFs from this AU don't like to stay "dead" for long...


	9. A Living Prophecy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pharma remembers certain things that happened to him back at Delphi. And then, Xaaron tells him something that Pharma needed to hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was beta-read by: [Tentaculiferous](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Tentaculiferous/profile) and [KinkStone](http://archiveofourown.org/users/KinkStone/profile).
> 
> Please note that [this is all I ever found regarding Pharma’s alt-mode](https://markerguru001.tumblr.com/post/64429652748/the-first-image-is-the-original-sketch-i-came-up). We just know what it looks like, not what it does. So I decided to to do my own take on it. (In other words, the following chapter is 100% made-up/my personal headcanon.)
> 
>  **(22 MAY, 2019) EDIT:** I forgot that not everyone is familiar with [book lungs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_lung) or why I felt I needed to mention them.

    Xaaron was wheeled back to his room in the clinic. Pharma stayed beside him until he regained consciousness. In the t-cog surgeries he performed for Tarn, Pharma always had the anesthetic antidote on hand, since Tarn needed to leave immediately. But Pharma always thought it was better for the patient to recover from it on their own.

    Pharma put on his translation headphones because he sensed two legislators outside the door. He suspected that they were talking about him, but they weren’t. They were just discussing their plans for Quintessence Day. Pharma let out a relieved sigh and took off the headphones, placing them by Xaaron’s bedside.

    Back at Delphi, First Aid and Ambulon liked to stand by his office door and gossip about him. First Aid accused Pharma of being “useless” since he didn’t try to revive Fort Max. While Ambulon just badmouthed him in general. At first, Pharma dismissed the hostility as typical Decepticon rudeness. But it seemed there was more to it than that. Pharma tried to ignore it, since pointless antagonism was beneath him. Later, Ambulon offhandedly accused Pharma of being a Decepticon spy, not only because Pharma was Stanixian (Stanix is a Decepticon city-state) but that it was the reason Pharma hated him “for no reason”, not because he was a slob and a total gear-stick towards him. To make matters worse, this happened around the same time Pharma received an email telling him that Delphi was getting defunded. Hurt and furious, Pharma decided to take matters into his own hands, quite literally.

    Pharma went to his secret lab in the basement, which he had hidden deep into his garden. Transmuting an old SIM card and one of Ambulon’s cheese-sticks (because Pharma needed a reagent that his enemy enjoyed), Pharma received an official Decepticon SIM card. The transmuted SIM card’s frequency was similar to what Decepticon High Command used. Pharma had made the decision to contact the DJD to rid himself of Ambulon. Unfortunately, the DJD didn’t get rid of Ambulon. (Besides, if Pharma had been a real Decepticon spy, he would’ve known how inefficient the DJD was. But as an Autobot, he wasn’t immune to Decepticon propaganda and believed it.) Pharma did get enough supplies from them as to not rouse suspicion about the defunding, but it worsened his anxiety, so it wasn’t worth it.

    Suddenly, Xaaron grabbed Pharma by the wrist and spoke to him in Primal Vernacular with his posh Iaconian accent. “There is something I need to tell you.”

    “Go on,” said Pharma. The time seemed right for the effects of the anesthetic to wear off. “I’ve got the time, since I have to monitor your status.”

    Xaaron smiled and held Pharma’s hand. “You are a good friend and I’m so happy you were able to take time from your busy schedule to help me.” A tear ran down his cheek and he said, “Forgive my tears, there’s been so many things I’ve thought about lately. Many of them involve my beloved Impactor. He was wrongfully imprisoned in Garrus-9 and then the Wreckers went there but no one has told me anything about him. Do you know?”

    “Yes,” replied Pharma. He recognized the Wreckers because of First Aid, who was an avid fan of theirs. They had stopped on Messantine on their way to Earth, to drop off their human companion. The Wreckers specifically requested Pharma to come on board their ship, because of his 0% mortality rate while performing experimental life-saving surgeries. “He was weeping bitterly over Springer. I didn’t have a chance to speak with him because Perceptor and Roadbuster escorted him back to his room. You know it’s bad when those stoic types can’t hide their emotions anymore.”

    “Oh…” sighed Xaaron.

    Pharma felt immediate regret. He didn’t want to make Xaaron sad, but he also couldn’t lie to him. Impactor was alive, but emotionally unwell. Pharma did everything he could to stabilize Springer and Fort Max. Springer was more critical due to his weak book lungs. As for the others – the Jumpstarters and three other new soldiers, all who were killed during the battle, Pharma decided to reanimate them with his necromancy. As always, Pharma had to be subtle, rebuilding their bodies before getting close to their ears and whispering, “I’m sorry.”

    The mood certainly changed after these miraculous revivals. And for the first time, Pharma actually felt proud of his ability. It wasn’t until a few days later, that he realized that he actually had no regrets about this. Especially, since First Aid would’ve howled inconsolably if he knew some of them had died. He still howled when Pharma told him about Springer being put on life-support because his injuries were too severe and Kup was so adamant about it.

    Without thinking, Pharma hugged Xaaron. Holding back his tears, Xaaron uttered feebly, “I don’t deserve you, Ratchet.”

    Pharma froze. Then he realized the anesthetic he used was one hydrogen molecule away from being Truth Serum, a chemical which decreased self-control. Everything that Xaaron wanted to tell him was being told to him with the utmost sincerity.

    Xaaron continued, “It often makes me sad when I see you beating yourself up for not doing enough. You are a normal mech, you can't possibly do anymore even if you wanted to. The Autobot Cause thanks you…I thank you…Optimus thanked you too. Countless others whom you’ve treated and healed. Please remember this if you feel like giving up. I may not know as much about medicine as you, but now that I’m retired I’m more than happy to lend you an ear so you can vent when you need it.”

    With a nervous chuckle, Pharma replied, “Emirate, you’re talking to the wrong mech. Everyone hates me and doesn’t hesitate to tell me I’m worthless.”

    The reply startled Xaaron. He expected Ratchet’s usual reply of “Thank you, I needed that.” It was then that Xaaron realized that it was _indeed_ the wrong mech. Indignant, Xaaron replied, “Of course they would tell you those lies, you’re the Reincarnation of Adaptus. Your very existence disturbs those who embrace chaos, because you’d bring order into this world.”

    “I’m the fruit of infidelity,” said Pharma. “That's the reason they hate me. Nobody in my family has shoulder-vents like these.”

    “One of Adaptus’ forms is a jet with vents exactly like those,” replied Xaaron. “It’s known as the HEPA Jet, it supposedly has the ability to purify the air. Purification of the air is obviously part of ‘Cleanse and Control’ and so is bringing order into this world. So once Vector Sigma decided you should be sparked, you were also granted the form of the mythical HEPA Jet. No one else naturally has this form but you.” Xaaron grabbed his phone and spoke to it. “HEPA Jet pics.”

    Xaaron showed Pharma the image results, all of them were artist renderings (albeit of different color palettes) of what the HEPA Jet was supposed to look like. Most of them were an exact match. “I’m sure this was one of the reasons why Functionists wanted everyone to stick to their natural alt-modes. The publicity surrounding a fraud would hurt their cause either way. I’m convinced that this is also why Vector Sigma decided that you should be born among non-believers. They wouldn’t realize how special you are, so you’d be safe from Functionists. The thought of them kidnapping…er, ‘adopting’ an innocent sparkling and indoctrinating him with their propaganda to use them as political leverage, sickens me.”

    “Do you think Ratchet may’ve known about the HEPA Jet?” asked Pharma.

    “Not sure,” said Xaaron. “He believed religion was a personal matter and rarely spoke about his views. He’s Vaporexan, and I know for a fact they worship Epistemus over there. Usually these sects just tend to focus on their Guiding Hand god, and Primus, and not concern themselves too much about the rest. But Ratchet has also spent a lot of time in Iacon, where Adaptus is worshipped. But I don’t recall him mentioning it to me.”

    Xaaron was thinking about what else to tell Pharma to keep the conversation going. He felt immediate relief just from being Pharma’s arm-length away from him, since Pharma was a living air-filter. Fortunately, Pharma didn’t have plans to go anywhere far, for long. Especially since Xaaron was close to Ratchet and had good things to say about him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ambulon didn’t like Pharma because of the HEPA Jet form. He thought Pharma was a false prophet. Though he should've suspected that Pharma wasn't one at all, because Pharma only bragged about his surgical skills not his "supposed" holiness. Since I'm not going to focus on the Lost Light crew for a while, Ambulon does find out that Pharma defeated the virus by channeling Adaptus and feels bad because this meant Pharma was the real deal. Ratchet knew about the HEPA Jet, it's that he never thought it had to do with Pharma.
> 
> Xaaron believed that Impactor is angry at him for his crimes and that's why he never called him while incarcerated at Garrus-9. Pharma's remark made it clear that, that was definitely not the case..


	10. What’s worse than photos?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten must take a quiz about T-cog surgery to prove he is capable of working as a Tyrest Accord Deputy. It's not as easy as it seems, because he's distracted by other more concerning matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was beta-read by: [Tentaculiferous](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Tentaculiferous/profile) and [KinkStone](http://archiveofourown.org/users/KinkStone/profile). 
> 
>  
> 
> **This chapter is also a birthday gift to myself. <3 **
> 
>  
> 
> If this story was animated, Ten would be saying "Ten" the entire time but with subtitles. If he is having a conversation, the "normal dialogue" is just subtitles.

    Lockdown and his crew were in their ship. While they were offered temporary housing on their stay on Luna-1, they had always politely declined. At least how Lugnut described it, “It’s too uncomfortably _Autobot_ for my tastes.”

    As they were relaxing, Steve, the triple changer second-in-command, went to look for his captain, Lockdown. Lockdown was in the storage room counting the supplies – specifically the collection of body parts harvested from Tyrest Accord violators. Lockdown always made sure his ship was stocked with spare parts. (Even though new blank parts were readily available on Luna-1 for him to take on request, but Lockdown preferred hunting for pre-owned parts instead.)

    “Hey boss,” said Steve.

    “What?” growled Lockdown. “I’m busy.”

    “Aw man, I just wanted to remind you that you’ve got to go to that one conference room to give that legislator kid a quiz,” said Steve,

    “Fff…” gasped Lockdown. “How much time do I got?”

    “They said it was at 5:30,” replied Steve. “And it’s 5:10.”

    “I think I have an old quiz lying around,” said Lockdown as he tried to nonchalantly walk out of the room. He entered the medibay and pulled out one of his old med-school textbooks. At least Lockdown had remembered that the quiz had to be about t-cog surgery. He looked at the end of the chapter and saw a 30 question quiz. He made a couple of photocopies and then an extra copy of the quiz answers in the back of the textbook.

    Meanwhile, Tyrest was sitting in the conference room with Ten, helping him study. As much as he wanted to stop Ten from pursuing a career in enforcing the Tyrest Accord, he also couldn’t bear to see Ten fail. (Even if the purpose of the quiz was to make it more difficult for Ten to apply to be a Duly Appointed Deputy of the Tyrest Accord.)

    “You’ve learned so much from observing the operation,” said Tyrest, “don’t you want to study medicine instead? You’d help plenty of people and I’ve been told it’s a very fulfilling career.”

    Ten paused and said, “From what I’ve heard, Ultra Magnus was still able to attend college, online, and got his music degree. I think he’s currently studying art too. If I got to work as a deputy, I could possibly study medicine in my down time. But I don’t know if my interest in medicine is because anatomy fascinates me. At least because I want to get good at drawing it.”

    “You can study medicine and art,” said Tyrest. “Even with photography, learning via hand-drawn diagrams is still helpful.”

    “Could a deputy be a forensic artist?” asked Ten. “From what I’ve heard, these artists can reconstruct the faces of rusted mechs to show how they may have looked like when they were alive. That’s medical, artistic, and a very useful skill for a deputy who’s investigating the case to possess.”

    “…Yes,” replied Tyrest. “And while it does combine those skills, do you really think you’d be able to handle looking at a rusted corpse?”

    “Well, I grew up seeing you examine evidence and some of it was rusted corpses,” replied Ten. “The others were mutilated corpses; ripped apart during a struggle, it seems…”

    Tyrest turned pale and let out a soft gasp.

    Ten tried to remain calm and succeeded in doing so externally; internally he was filled with dread because he had never seen Tyrest, his beloved dam, so mortified. Ten had always found forensics fascinating, as far as he could remember. However, he knew that Tyrest wouldn’t be happy about him observing while he examined the evidence. Specifically, the more gruesome evidence. Ten always sneaked in to peek and being blessed with excellent stealth, he never got caught. He never did, until now but only because he admitted to it.

    Just then, a portal opened up, and Lockdown walked in. He sensed the tension in the room almost immediately. Tyrest stood up and quietly exited the room. Tyrest was on the verge of tears, as he was leaving, crippled by the immense guilt of exposing his only son to horrific crimes due to his carelessness.

    When the door closed, Lockdown finally realized that Tyrest was crying. Calmly, he said to Ten, “Look kid. I don’t want to know what happened between you two. I just want to get this freakin’ quiz over with.”

    “Ten…,” replied Ten anxiously.

    “Shi…p,” mumbled Lockdown. He remembered that he forgot his translating headphones in his room and was too proud – ashamed to retrieve them. He had no idea what legislators said. He had even _less_ of an idea how Tyrest even managed to understand their number-speak without translation devices.

    Lockdown handed Ten one of the test copies. It was in that exact moment that he remembered he left the pencils for Ten on his ship's medibay counter. Fortunately, Ten had brought his own mechanical pencil and a white drafting eraser. Ten read the quiz as Lockdown looked on. He wasn’t sure if Ten was reading the questions aloud or nervously muttering his name over and over again. Unfortunately, it was the latter.

    Ten had never seen Tyrest make that face before and was consumed by guilt for upsetting him, not only because Tyrest was his dam but also the queen of the colony. He knew that admitting to seeing gory photos was what upset Tyrest. But Ten figured that Tyrest wouldn’t care anymore, now that he was a well-adjusted adult and clearly the product of an excellent upbringing. At least, that’s what any legislator in general would think, but Tyrest isn’t a legislator like them. For the most part, Ten was preoccupied thinking about this, instead of his quiz.

    Lockdown was observing Ten fill out the quiz and saw Ten work so methodically that even the circles he drew around his answer choices were perfect. Lockdown wondered if this was why Tyrest was afraid of letting legislators be enforcers and  deputies – they would be too orderly and efficient for the job. Despite his harshness, Tyrest valued humanity, and would be displeased that his employees were nothing more than ruthless killing machines. At least, this is what Lockdown wondered when he executed violators in cold blood to harvest their parts. He often felt guilt for even thinking about hunting mechs. But he always tried to lie to himself and say it was for the common good or greater sense or whatever nice-sounding nonsense that Tyrest would accept. To Lockdown, Ten might look like a sweet innocent kid, but he was probably a natural-born killer who wouldn’t hesitate to crush anyone’s skull if they even looked at him funny.

    Ten handed Lockdown the paper and Lockdown checked the answers. Lockdown could sense the tension in the room and wasn't sure what to make of it. Legislators in general were extremely unpredictable. Unlike other Cybertronians, their faces were made of a hard-plating and weren’t as facially expressive. They only appeared to have three expressions; calm, upset, and extremely pissed. Lockdown had seen legislators execute a violator while having a calm expression, so none of their facial expressions mattered. Lockdown felt that if he marked an answer wrong, Ten would probably go ballistic on him. (Lockdown saw himself as too young and handsome to die.) Luckily, Ten answered everything correctly and scored a perfect 10.

    He showed the score to Ten, but that didn’t seem to lighten Ten’s mood. Lockdown put the quiz and the answers in a folder, which he planned to drop off at Tyrest’s office for revision. He then told Ten he was dismissed and Ten ran out of the conference room as fast as he could. Lockdown shook his head, locked the room, and teleported himself to the front of Tyrest’s office, which was closed. He put the envelope in the mail slot before going back to his ship.

    Meanwhile, Ten ran to Tyrest’s room and saw that the door was locked. Immediately, he feared the worst. It reminded him of the time he finished his finals and had happily hurried back to Tyrest’s room only to find the door locked. Fortunately, Ten carried a key and entered, but the room was uncomfortably quiet. Concerned, Ten called out Tyrest and heard no answer. He went into the bedchamber and found Tyrest unresponsive on the floor in a pool of blood. It was then when Ten noticed Tyrest’s retracted index finger, exposing a bloodied drill. Panicked, Ten pushed the drill back into the finger and ran out of the room calling for help. It was the worst three days Ten ever had, because his dam nearly died and he hoped to never relive it. Taking a deep breath, Ten opened the door.

    There was a housekeeper observing in the distance and two medics who were bandaging up Tyrest’s legs. Ten approached the housekeeper and asked, “What happened to my dam?”

    “I had entered the room to clean and saw that he had an outbreak of those holes all over his legs,” he replied. “I called the medics to get him cleaned up and bandaged. Poor thing, his work is stressing him out. He should quit and take care of the sparklings instead, like a proper queen. His health will improve because of it.”

    It took most of his willpower for Ten to maintain composure. He walked up to Tyrest and asked, “What happened?”

    “Don’t worry, I had an outbreak,” replied Tyrest calmly. “But it’s my fault. I was irresponsible and not careful about observing my surroundings. I couldn’t keep it under control.” Tyrest looked at his legs as the medics finished. “I don’t think I’d be able to go visit Xaaron this evening. My legs hurt too much to walk and video-chatting isn’t the same as having a one-on-one talk with him.”

    Ten somehow managed to find _more_ willpower to still stay calm. He asked, “What if I carried you? Just like you carried me when I was a baby.”

    Tyrest let out a tiny cough but then burst into tears. Ten hugged him and attempted to coo because he had heard that jets were calmed by that. The other legislators looked on, confused by Ten’s odd affectionate act. Uncomfortable, because it clashed with their strict and more formal social norms, they exited the room.

    Ten wasn’t naïve and knew Tyrest’s holes were self-inflicted, since that day he found him unconscious. (And a later incident where he had walked in on Tyrest self-harming, which made Ten re-evaluate his entire childhood. He felt so ashamed for not noticing his dam’s suffering.) Ten couldn’t confront Tyrest about it; the way he reacted to Ten admitting that he watched him work was proof of that and Ten couldn’t risk upsetting him further. Telling the other legislators was even worse. They were a proud people and like other insecticons, they took pride in the well-being of their breeding colony queen. For their queen to have self-harming tendencies and possibly suicidal tendencies, was an unspeakable shame because they saw it as failure for inadequately caring for their queen.

    Ten’s only hope was the foreigners – Emirate Xaaron, the Missionaries from New Crystal City, Nightbeat, and his hero, Ultra Magnus. (Lockdown and his crew were too cruel and ruthless in Ten’s eyes. Ten was intimidated by them, especially Lockdown because he thought he was mean.) From the stargazing he had learned from Tyrest, Ten was reassured that a fiery-tempered foreigner would cure him. At first, Ten thought it was Ultra Magnus, but Magnus was clearly a cool individual. He then figured it would be Xaaron, but Xaaron was cool too, even though he didn’t hesitate to tell the truth no matter how painful it was. Then there was Star Saber, who also didn’t hesitate to tell the truth, but Ten was intimidated by his power and also because he feared Star Saber would flip out upon learning about the self-harm. (Self-harm is a grave sin in all Primalist religions.) To play it safe, Ten felt more comfortable trying to talk to Xaaron about the subject. But that wasn't a reasonable thing to do either, Xaaron was currently recovering from surgery.

    Remembering that he had a small bag of trailmix, Ten pulled it out and offered it to Tyrest, who was starting to calm down. It was then that Ten remembered that Pharma, the Reincarnation of Adaptus, was there. Ten had only seen him twice and knew right away that he was nice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AU!Lockdown is a former medical student, but a combination of his work and obsession with upgrades has kept him practicing and refining his skill that he's as competent as any licensed surgeon. He has kept his old textbooks as reference material in the medibay. (For some reason, he thinks he doesn't need to buy or ask for more updated textbooks.)
> 
> This was mentioned in the Google Drive fic (which takes place before this story), that Ten was given to Tyrest, by the colony, for adoption. As expected, Tyrest happily received his child and tried his best to raise him as his own. Unbeknownst to both Tyrest and Ten, this adoption was purely politically-motivated. Since [the widowed] Tyrest refused to marry into the colony to properly assimilate with them, they decided to let him bond with a child from the colony to assimilate him that way instead. Ten's parents are alive and he visits them regularly, but Ten sees them as uncles and sees Tyrest as his real parent.


	11. The Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some post-operative down time; Pharma is getting ready to sign a whole bunch of forms and Ten is sad that Tyrest doesn't support his decision of becoming a Tyrest Accord deputy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Not beta-read.**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> I was side-tracked with another unposted WIP that I forgot to re-read this or ask a friend to beta-read it. And I just realized that May is ending and I haven't updated this fic or any of the other "ongoing" ones because I was busy with the unposted WIP.

    That evening, Pharma walked to the clinic’s pantry accompanied by one of the legislators who punched in the password. (As in, he punched a large button and the locking device recognized him from the force of the punch.) Pharma pulled out apple juice from the fridge and poured it into a small cup. He got a small baggy and filled it with droid-shaped crackers (which where gluten-free). They left, locking the pantry, and returned to Xaaron’s room to give him the snacks.

    Xaaron looked at the snacks and said, “Thank you.” He took a sip of the juice and ate one of the crackers. Although the snacks were delicious, Xaaron couldn’t help but feel disappointed about the fact that the legislators were serving steak for dinner, and meat (living metal) was too heavy for him to eat. Had he remembered sooner, he would’ve begged to postpone the surgery a few more days.

    “Huh, it’s almost going to be dinner, I assumed Tyrest and Ten would’ve been here by now,” said Xaaron as he checked his phone.

    “He’s probably running late,” replied Pharma.

    “Impossible, my friend is very punctual,” said Xaaron. “Something has happened to him.”

    The legislator, knowing that Tyrest had injured his legs about an hour ago, shrugged. Although Xaaron was small and frail, this legislator knew better than to upset a tank. (Tanks tend to be volatile.) The legislator decided to leave the room to finish his charting when he saw Ten walking down the hallway, led by another legislator who was carrying Tyrest. Surprised but relieved that Tyrest was in good hands, the legislator went to a nearby cubicle to document Xaaron’s progress.

    As Ten knocked on the door, the legislator carrying Tyrest put him down, and waited for someone to answer the door. Pharma opened the door and noticed Tyrest’s injuries but said nothing. Ten hurried to Xaaron’s bedside as Tyrest stopped at the entrance and washed his hands at the sink. Pharma saw that Tyrest retracted his dried-energon stained drills, rinsing them off thoroughly before putting them away.

    Meanwhile, Xaaron opened his cracker baggy and offered a couple of crackers to Ten. Suddenly, Pharma turned around and saw them, asking, “Do you two want more crackers? I can ask for more.”

    Tyrest interjected, “No, we’re going to have gingerbread cookies for dessert. It’s not good to have too many sweets before bedtime.”

    “These crackers just taste like cinnamon, there’s hardly anything sweet about them,” replied Xaaron.

    “I forget you Iaconians put excessive amounts of sugar in everything,” said Tyrest. “This is why Prowl has diabetes. He came to Iacon and ate too many of your sugary pastries.”

    “No, he doesn’t,” replied Xaaron. “He has _pre-diabetes_. That’s different.” Xaaron turned to Pharma. “Tell him it’s different. Because it means he’s only at risk for it. Not that Prowl actually has it.”

    Not wanting to get caught in the middle of an argument between two prominent and notoriously scrupulous Cybertronian lawyers (one of whom was promoted to judge), Pharma said, “The risk was still high for him to receive that diagnosis.”

    Pharma continued, “I studied in Iacon too. The pastries were averagely sweet. I think it's that in the Sea of Rust, people prefer to use alternative sweeteners like syrup or honey, and reserve the sugar for coffee or jam.”

    “That's common sense,” scoffed Tyrest.

    “The Rustic syrup isn’t any better,” said Xaaron. “The artificial kind is used a lot because it’s cheaper than the natural kind, and that is worse than regular sugar.”

    Just then, Star Saber entered the room, interrupting the pointless bickering with his presence alone. He approached Xaaron and pulled out Xaaron’s tiny laptop from his subspace. Xaaron got his regular-sized laptop from Star Saber and turned it on. The first thing Xaaron wanted to do was check his emails.

    “My apologies for taking so long,” replied Star Saber, “I had to take an important call.”

    “I was wondering why you stayed behind,” replied Tyrest. “I know there’s like 10 pages of forms you must fill out, but that’s a one-time occurrence if you’re currently stationed here.”

    “Who were you calling?” asked Xaaron.

    “Nightbeat and my friends,” replied Star Saber. He looked at Ten and added, “You know, about the same old personal project we’ve been working on for weeks.” Although Tyrest appeared calm, he seemed upset about having secrets withheld from him. Star Saber continued, “Lost cities and all…”

    “I see…” said Tyrest, as he motioned for Ten to leave the room with them.

    Thinking that it wasn’t any of his business either, Pharma left the room after them. Xaaron’s eyes widened, because he wanted Pharma to stay. Star Saber shrugged and said, “My colleagues finally got a good thorough look at the codex. And in it, they found an old, stylized map of Luna-1. When you feel better, we’ll take you to our conference room and show it to you. If it’s accurate, Adaptica is located on the ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. The city’s layout is in the shape of Adaptus’ symbol.”

    “Ugh…” sighed Xaaron. “That’s where the terrorcon infestation seems to stem from too. So the tales of the demons corrupting the earth; they’ve defiled this holy city. But, I have a plan.”

    “What do you have in mind?” asked Star Saber.

    “I need to double-check my sources, but it involves crafting an experimental weapon,” said Xaaron. “I don’t recall its proper name, but the weapon makes spark-eaters explode. These terrorcons are no different than sparkeaters, at least the ones we’ve seen.”

    “Which sources?” asked Star Saber, intrigued by the thought of exploding terrorcons.

    “It’s in the Covenant of Primus, in the book of Solus Prime,” replied Xaaron. “Not sure, but I believe the passages are in the 25th chapter. It’s towards the end; where it starts talking about the end of days and how we will revolt against the great evil, needing to arm ourselves in the process.”

    “I know which passages you’re referring to,” said Star Saber. “But the description of the weapon is unclear. Likely because it’s too dangerous and with our warring nature, it could easily fall into the hands of enemies.”

    “Yeah, that’s why I wanted Pharma here,” said Xaaron. “But no, he left with Tyrest, following him like a little jetling. Perhaps we can convince Pharma to come to one of our meetings. Pharma seems like the suggestible type.”

    Outside the room, Pharma led Tyrest to a nearby waiting area where they sat. Pharma was fortunate to find a wheelchair and he, with Ten’s help sat Tyrest down and rolled him the rest of the way. Pharma was sitting on a chair and Tyrest was on the sofa, with Ten curled up close to him. Wanting to break the silence with some small talk, Pharma asked Tyrest, “Is he your son?”

    “Yes,” replied Tyrest. “Why’d you ask?”

    “You two look similar, especially in the cheeks and the hands,” said Pharma. “He’s also the only one of these giant mechs who has normal fingers like both of us.” Pharma held up his hands which had the dull, rounded Autobot fingers.

    Tyrest got Ten’s hand and looked at it. Come to think of it, Ten’s hands were as light as Tyrest’s but yellowish. All these years, and Tyrest hadn’t noticed until Pharma pointed it out. It took Tyrest a moment to realize that Pharma mistook Ten was biologically related to him, when this wasn’t the case. The legislators gave Ten to Tyrest to adopt, and they’ve been together ever since.

    “Ten…?” replied Ten. Pharma’s observation was correct, Ten had noticed that everyone else had sharp talon-like fingers except him. Even among his brothers, as Ten was a triplet, their hands were light, but their fingers were sharp. It had been this way his entire life.

    “He’s asking you if his hands are defective,” said Tyrest.

    “They’re not,” replied Pharma. “But I guess normal hands are rare for your kind.”

    “Ten,” said Ten slightly relieved.

    “Before I forget, I need you to sign several forms,” said Tyrest, as he looked through his subspace. “Due to the nature of my friend’s emergency surgery, you needed to sign forms requesting permission to perform surgery here on Luna-1. It was required for both Autobots and Decepticons, as part of the Tyrest Accord.”

    “Ten?” interrupted Ten.

    “I beg your pardon?” asked Tyrest.

    Ten looked at his dam in the eye and repeated himself, “What if you just hired him? There are no surgeons permanently stationed here on Luna-1. We were lucky Lockdown had stationed here for a bit when that _incident_ occurred. And from the looks of it, the doctor doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

    “I can’t just order random civilians to stay here on Luna-1,” replied Tyrest.

    “Aw man…” mumbled Pharma.

    “So you want to stay?” asked Tyrest.

    “Yes sir,” replied Pharma. “I’ve only been here about a day and a half, and I can’t think of being stationed at a better place. The New Institute was okay, it could’ve been better if it wasn’t so creepy. Rodion was hectic, the workload was heavy over there and the medics were competitive with each other. Delphi was a frozen Hell and it made me lose my faith in mechanity. This clinic, the workload is light and nobody here is bad-mouthing me behind my back.”

    “If that’s the case, you still need to sign those permission forms,” said Tyrest. “As for your job, I can help you fill out a paper application, once we get permission from the CMO, Nine One-One. Though I’m sure he won’t mind working with you, seeing that you’re the Reincarnation of Adaptus.”

    Ten’s right eye twitched slightly. Tyrest never offered to help _him_ with his job application to become a Tyrest Accord Deputy. In fact, Tyrest just kept making up more hurdles, as if to sabotage Ten’s attempt. However, Tyrest had always encouraged Ten in his artistic pursuits, whether it was buying him art supplies, taking him to art lessons, and even giving him his honest critique. This was a stark contrast to how his biological parents viewed art, thinking it was useless, childish interest. They were also not amused by Ten’s desire to become a Tyrest Accord Deputy and didn’t hesitate to tell him their thoughts on the matter; that Ten wouldn’t last. To be more specific, they asked him on various occasions, “Do you think you’d survive until your first paycheck?”

    As Ten continued to reminisce, Tyrest texted Nine One-One and asked him about hiring Pharma. But Nine One-One was busy, so they needed to wait.

    Fortunately, Ten’s parents never mentioned their feelings towards Ten’s career choice to Tyrest. There was no need because everyone else knew Tyrest was also opposed to it. Though they couldn’t help but be slightly annoyed that Tyrest didn’t have the guts to discourage Ten directly. Tyrest was normally such a direct and frank person, but it seemed that this was different towards his own child. Tyrest didn't like to make him cry.

    Nine One-One finally answered the text. He stated that he gave Pharma permission and that he was impressed with Pharma’s alchemy. He told Tyrest to wait about half an hour, since he was busy with a patient.

    “I think I spoke to Nine One-One once,” said Pharma, “but I never heard his specialty.”

    “He’s an OB/GYN,” replied Tyrest. “He was the only licensed one here for several years, the other legislators are just skilled midwives, who work under his licence. That’s not counting the nurses and the techs, who are licensed and certified in their respective professions. There is a new licensed OB/GYN, he actually graduated this past winter and has begun to work here. But I don’t feel comfortable with him seeing me because I remember him as a toddler and watched him grow up.”

    Ten listened quietly to the conversation, only because he suspected that his dam was going to make up another quiz about medicine. To be fair, his dam didn’t start bringing up medicine until Ten decided to study Anatomy and Physiology, but only because he wanted an anatomy textbook to study how to draw real Cybertronians. His other option was to enroll in a “life drawing” course, but he felt too shy about bringing this up to his dam and parents. He suspected that they’d all overreact to him seeing nudity, but he wasn’t sure in what ways and wasn't interested in finding out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I can, these Legislators all have number names. They also say their names too. But then, this means that AU!Ten is different than the rest because he has dull Autobot fingers and isn't a condescending asshole who thinks he's better than non-legislator Cybertronians. (Though this haughty attitude tends to be more common among the adults than with the children.)
> 
> Tyrest will feel immense guilt if he made his only son cry and has a hard time telling him, "No!" However, Tyrest will probably lose his cool if someone picked on his son. Good thing that Ten lives happily here on Luna-1 and isn't bullied, mocked, or exploited as slave labor at some shady bar.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this story. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing this! <3


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